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nevertheless there. I looked outside but there was still no sign of the patrol.
    The cat cried to be let in, and I shut the kitchen door and ran her a makeshift bath in the kitchen sink. I’d tried to bathe cats before and this was every bit as traumatic as all my previous experiences. She scratched my arms to shreds as I sponged her back and undersides down with my best organic pH-neutral additive-free shampoo and warm water. I got most of it off. She’d been licking herself too, her fur sticking up in spikes. The thought of it, and the smell of her, even when she’d been washed and rinsed and dried off with a teatowel, was enough to make me heave. As soon as she struggled free of the towel she started hurtling about the kitchen in a panic, knocking things flying. Fearing for my crockery, I opened the back door and she shot straight out.
    The patrol had arrived by then, and, having gone next door, and called in that there was indeed a body and could they please have someone else to deal with it, they had agreed that I could go off to bed.
    In the cold light of day on Saturday morning, everything had looked very different. The cat was sitting on the back step, looking exceptionally pissed off. She came in when I opened the door and immediately turned her back on me, sitting in the corner of the kitchen and only moving when I filled her bowl with cat biscuits. The fur on her back and belly stood out in sticky spikes, but at least the smell had faded.
    I’d never met the Major Crime DC who eventually interviewed me, and, although he showed me his warrant card when I let him in, I instantly forgot his name. He told me he’d worked at Briarstone police station for the past year, and, when he said that, I recognised him from the canteen.
    ‘How are you?’ he asked me at last, coming into the living room. ‘Must have been quite a shock.’
    It was late afternoon, and I’d not eaten all day. Every time I thought about it, I remembered the horrible inflated shape of the body, the colour of the skin and the puddle under the chair.
    ‘I guess so,’ I said. ‘I think I was kind of expecting it, given the smell.’
    ‘Yes, it’s quite bad in there.’
    ‘You want a tea? Coffee?’
    ‘Coffee would be great, thanks. Two sugars. Alright if I use your loo?’
    I pointed him in the direction of the toilet and then I went to the kitchen and filled the kettle, waiting for it to boil. On the windowsill of the kitchen was a little statue of an angel that I’d bought in a New Age shop in Bath. It was lit up by the sunshine, shining as though surrounded by a halo of glory.
    I brought the coffees through to the living room. He was already sitting there, his pocket notebook out on his lap, writing something, head bent over the task.
    ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘You work in Intel, right?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m the public protection analyst. And I’m also one of the divisional analysts.’
    ‘You’re doing two jobs?’
    ‘Pretty much. There were four of us and I just did public protection, and then two of the team were redeployed last year and now there’s just me and another analyst. We share the stuff for the division between us.’
    He wasn’t remotely interested in our job descriptions but I was always hopeful that someone would eventually take note of the injustice of having to do twice as much work for no extra money. I nearly added something about how Kate just did the analysis for the North Division,
and
I did that and the public protection work too. But, as always, I bit my lip and said nothing.
    ‘So,’ he said, ‘you went in through the back door, is that right?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘There was a light on. I thought that was a bit odd because I didn’t think anyone was living there.’
    ‘There was a light on? Whereabouts?’
    ‘In the dining room. There was a lamp on the table.’
    He was writing. I waited for him to finish, tense. ‘Let’s go back a bit. You said on the phone that you broke a