Page 88 of Reinventing Cato
“Did you have your lock changed?” Pedro asked. “We saw the van.”
“Yep. My key kept sticking.”
“You didn’t try WD40?” Sam asked.
“It’s bad for locks.”You’re an engineer. Why didn’t you know that?“Brilliant for cleaning shower doors though.”
Sam laughed.
“You might as well chuck the spare key away,” Cato said. “I’ll get another cut.”No, I won’t.
Pedro pushed to his feet, rummaged in a drawer and tossed a key into the bin.
“That’s your safe place?” Cato gaped at him. “A drawer in the kitchen? What if we were burgled?”
“The drawer was the only place where I knew it wouldn’t get lost. Ours are in there too.”
My room wasn’t secure at all.Cato swallowed hard.
“I thought you weren’t seeing Louise anymore,” Pedro said.
“I’m not. I wouldn’t have seen her today if someone hadn’t let her in. If anyone wants to see me, ask who it is, then shut the door and come and tell me.”
Both Pedro and Sam gaped at him.
“Sorry, that was my fault,” Sam said. “I didn’t know you didn’t want to see her.”
“She’s an ex. Why would I want to see her?”
“She doesn’t listen to no,” Pedro said. “We didn’t think you’d mind. Sorry.”
Don’t make an issue of it.
“Party happening or not?” Cato asked.
“Yep,” Sam said. “Pedro and I have done a list of food and drink. The three of us can go and buy what we need the day before. I’ll sort the music.”
“Okay.” Cato went up to his room, unlocked the door and locked it again when he was inside.
He knew he was being paranoid, but he checked the room again, feeling under the bed, behind his chest of drawers, but came up empty-handed.
~~~
It was still dark when Vigge arrived at work. He touched his ID to the reader and headed up to the squad room, unsurprised to find it empty. The place looked different when no one was around. There was an air of gloomy anticipation, as if the room was waiting for something to happen. It was an unsettling thought that right at that moment, somewhere in the three counties this station covered, a crime was being committed that they’d end up discussing right here.
Vigge gave a heavy sigh. Was that what his life had come down to? Waiting for something bad to happen? Maybe that was why he was so taken with Cato. Something good in his life. Finally. Though Cato came with his own problems. Still, maybe that was why fate had drawn them together. Vigge just hoped he could keep Cato and his family safe.
By the time three of his team had trickled in, Vigge had reread everything in Athena that they had on Dan Frayn—statements from people who’d seen him that night, and ones from his friends, family, colleagues. Vigge had been through the photographs of where he was found, his home, and checked reports done by other police officers and the pathologist. He didn’t see anything that he’d not picked up on before. Apart from the pattern of the stab wounds. No mention anywhere though, that Frayn was interested in the stars.
He was a 29-year-old gay man, an occasional user of Grindr. Vigge had his phone records, but nothing on the app on the day Frayn had been killed. Yet his friends in the pub said he’d told them he was on his way to meet a Grindr date. So one he’d been with before? CCTV showed him leaving The Wheatsheaf at ten twenty, his head hunched over his phone. He turned a corner and wasn’t seen again until his body was discovered the next day in an isolated house in a village near Huntingdon. Horrified homeowners, Mr and Mrs Simpson, in their fifties, had made the grim discovery on returning from a holiday in Spain.
Vigge’s DCs had interviewed the Simpsons and all those they’d told about their holiday because Vigge didn’t think their house had been chosen at random. The murderer knew it was empty. But sometimes, you ended up with so much irrelevant detail, it was hard to spot that one crucial fact.
He had less information on Dewitt, 27-years-old, also gay, who’d been found dead in Brighton, also in a house where the owners were absent, this time almost a week after he’d been killed. Both men had been stabbed multiple times and now Vigge knew they’d been stabbed in a particular pattern. He was fairly certain that once he’d spoken to the major crime unit in Brighton, he’d have enough links between the murders to make a case to present to his DCI. He put in the request to Brighton, knowing he’d need to follow up tomorrow with a call. All this work and it was likely both cases would be taken from them by the Met.
When he’d done as much as he could on the murder, he took out the sheet of paper Cato had given him. It was no problem to check the names on Athena, but he couldn’t access the systems used by other forces. Since Max and Louise Wisley lived in Hampstead, he doubted he’d find anything on them. The PNC, police national computer, would only supply information on arrests, uncovering more became complicated. He could put in a PND request, to the police national database, but doing that meant Vigge would have to go against Cato’s wishes and make it an official enquiry. In theory, what Cato wanted didn’t matter. Whether he took this further was up to Vigge, but he still clung to the hope that he could sort it out without making it official.
For the time being, Vigge restricted his search to Athena and the PNC and found nothing connected to any name Cato had given him. Then he used Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter and all the others he could think of. Max Wisley was an intellectual property lawyer, an equity partner at one of the magic circle firms. His wife Louise worked for a London estate agent that specialised in multi-million-pound properties. Vigge found a few photographs of them attending charity events in London and the home counties. They were a good-looking pair, smiley, and Vigge took an instant dislike to both of them. The thought of Max, in particular, holding Cato, touching him in any way whatsoever was not something that sat easy with him.
