Cassie stayed on deck after Flyte left, so she could keep an eye on the estate opposite. Shivering, she zipped up her leather jacket and sparked up a Camel, prompting Macavity to throw her a look of outrage before jumping down to land on the catwalk with unnecessary force.
‘Look, once this pack’s gone, I’m giving up. OK?’ she told him. As he walked away, the tip of his tail twitched once as if in sceptical disgust.
The nicotine helped her to think. She had called Flyte that evening to tell her Sean’s body might only have travelled the short distance from the estate opposite to her boat, and to alert her to the movements of that shiny-suited creep Willets. Flyte had been the only person to show any interest when Sean had been just another anonymous floater rather than a murdered cop, and Cassie had always hated the idea that Willets might hoover up the praise for solving the case.
But Flyte’s reaction had startled her. It was much more than the weary annoyance of a woman who’d been sidelined by a male colleague. Which set Cassie thinking. That time she’d detected a citrusy smell in the cabin of the boat and wondered if an intruder had been on board; and lately she’d thought it was Bethany, if anyone.
But it had only happened a couple of days before Willets paid her an official visit with that uniform in tow, to ask her what made her think that Sean’s body had been frozen. Could he have been the intruder? He’d been sceptical about how she’d reached her conclusion. Had he been sniffing around to see if she was hiding any evidence? But if so, why go about it in such a high-risk way?
Making a decision, she hopped down to the towpath and went to Gaz’s boat where the cabin lights glimmered around the edges of the drapes covering the portholes. When he came out into the cockpit, she said, ‘You know the rough-sleeper guy who hangs around here, the cosmologist?’
‘Copernicus?’ Gaz scratched his stubbled chin. ‘Yeah? I saw him today actually.’
‘Whereabouts? Does he kip down round here?’
Gaz leaned over the side and pointed upstream along the towpath. ‘He has a little den in the bushes by the scaffold yard, up there next to the bridge.’
Cassie was off up the towpath, throwing thanks over her shoulder at a bemused Gaz.