Wake-up Call

Chapter 1 The racket that woke Dez could accurately be called caterwauling. Cats. Yowling and making noises he’d never heard cats make before. What the hell? That bloody café. He was about to pull the duvet over his head to block out the noise when he heard a crash and a yell. That brought him jumping out of bed with little conscious thought—and immediate regret as his feet thumping the floor jarred his bad shoulder. He bit down on the pain and moved through the flat in the dark, not wanting to lose his night vision by turning on a light. Streetlamps shining through the thin curtains on the living room window gave him enough illumination to find the door. There was a lot of crashing and yelling going on now. He undid the two locks and three bolts of his front door, which opened into the dimly lit common hallway. Down a half flight of stairs, the door of the other flat on this floor stood open, and the noise came from inside it. As he watched, the door suddenly slammed against the wall and two men fell into the corridor, struggling. Dez ran down the stairs two at a time. “Police!” he yelled, though he didn’t have his warrant card when clad only in pajama trousers and a T-shirt. “Stop!” The men froze and stared up at him. He instantly recognized one as the resident of the flat, the guy who ran the café downstairs. The cat café. From inside the flat, the caterwauling continued. The other man, a stranger, unfroze first, and as Dez strode towards them, he shoved away the café guy, who crashed to the floor. The stranger scrambled up and ran down the stairs to the street door. Dez instinctively started to run after him, but first glanced at his neighbor. The man had blood on his face, but he was moving, trying to get up. So Dez pursued the attacker pounding down the stairs. “Police!” Dez shouted again, trying to find the voice he hadn’t used in months. Trying to find that authority again. The man turned. A silhouette, a deeper shadow in the darkness, and raised his arm— GUN! Dez froze, muscles jamming. His mind narrowed to a single point, to what he could see in the man’s hand. He has a gun, he has a gun, he has— The man moved slightly, enough to allow light from the narrow window halfway up the stairs to fall over his shoulder, showing something long and thin, a jemmy or tire iron. Dez gripped the handrail so hard he feared he’d come away with a palm full of splintered wood. For a long breathless moment, he and the stranger stuck that way, like a buffering video, then the man turned and fled down the stairs. The front door opened, street light spilling in, and slammed closed. His footsteps were audible for a couple of seconds, then faded. Dez unfroze. His legs shook and he wanted to run back to his flat and lock himself in. Sleep. Make this all a dream that would disappear in the morning. But as he mounted the top of the stairs, he found his neighbor still on the floor, groaning and holding his head. Dez dropped to a knee beside him. He had a nasty jagged cut over one eye, and both eyes were unfocused. Dez helped him sit against the wall and looked him over for other injuries, but saw nothing. “Take it easy,” he said. “He’s gone. Do you know him?” “What…? No…heard a noise and he was in the flat.” “And you tackled him?” This guy was a waif type, slight and barely over five-seven. “Not clever.” “Had to…the cats…” Yeah. The cats. The yowling continued from behind a closed door inside the flat. Best to keep them behind said door. A lot of panicking cats would only add complications to the scene. “What’s your name?” Dez asked. They’d spoken a couple of times, and he thought they’d exchanged names, but that had been a while back, when he’d been in a painkiller haze a lot of the time. Now, it came to him in a flash. “Mr. Green, isn’t it?” “Francis Green, yes. Ow, my head, f**k, ow.” He looked at his hand, the bloody fingers. “Oh, hell.” “Phone?” Dez asked. Francis waved vaguely at his door. “Beside the bed.” Dez left him leaning against the wall and hurried into the dim sitting room. He turned on the light and found an open door into a bedroom. In the light from the lamp by the rumpled double bed, he saw a mobile phone on the nightstand. He picked it up and pulled out the charging cable into which it was plugged. It was 1:47, he noted as the phone lit up. It needed a code to unlock it. Dez tapped the Emergency Call button on the screen. “Police and ambulance,” he said when they asked what service he required. He rattled out the address. “One casualty, male, mid-twenties, head injury. Intruder fled the scene, gone west towards Dean Street…Ah, yes, I’m a police officer. Off duty. Derek Walker.” Yes, he thought, hearing the pause before the emergency operator spoke again. That Derek Walker. Through the bedroom door, he saw Francis Green stagger into the flat and flop onto the sofa. Dez hung up the phone with the reassurance that help would be with him in minutes, and headed out to Francis. On the way, he almost fell over an open bag on the floor. A quick glance at the contents told him it was housebreaking tools. He left them untouched and knelt by Francis. The head wound was still bleeding freely. Francis seemed too shaky and dazed to put much pressure on it, so Dez stripped off his T-shirt and wadded part of it into a pad to hold over the wound. “Ow,” Francis muttered, looking at Dez with pained eyes, but not trying to pull away from him. “An ambulance will be here shortly,” Dez said. “You’re a policeman?” Francis asked, voice trembling. “Yes.” “I didn’t know.” That was how Dez preferred it. He’d spoken to his neighbor only a couple of times. They were the sole residents of the upper-story flats in the converted townhouse. Francis had a much bigger flat than Dez’s. The man lived “above the shop,” running the cat café that took up the ground floor. “I should check the cats,” Francis said. “He was trying to get in there. There’s a door down to the café, the safe in the office.” “He didn’t get through. The cats sound fine.” Nothing wrong with their lungs anyway. Though they were quieting now that the banging and crashing had stopped. But they were clearly unhappy, and a fresh banging on the door from below set them caterwauling again.