Lulu took a drink of her coffee and nodded her approval. Generally, police coffee wasn’t good, but the one they had given her was rich and flavourful and definitely not instant. She looked around the four bare walls. There was a window high up in the wall to her right, through which she could see the sky. There were four plastic chairs around a square table. The door was closed, but the constable who had given Lulu her coffee hadn’t locked it when he left.
‘Are we in trouble?’ asked Conrad. He was sitting on the chair next to her with a bowl of water in front of him. He had sniffed it but not had a drink, so Lulu figured it was probably tap water. Conrad wasn’t really a fan of tap water.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘This isn’t an interview room, there’s no CCTV or recording equipment. It’s just a regular waiting room. And we’re the injured party, remember that.’
Conrad chuckled. ‘But we’re not the ones with our cheek slashed, are we?’
‘You saved me, again.’
‘Anyone who pulls a knife on you gets to see my bad side,’ said Conrad.
‘You have a bad side?’
‘It’s been said,’ he said.
‘You reacted so quickly,’ said Lulu.
‘Like lightning,’ said Conrad.
‘Yes, exactly. It was a blur.’
‘To you, maybe. To me, it seemed to happen in slow motion. You know we cats react almost twice as quickly as dogs? And way, way quicker than humans.’
‘Which is why you always land on your feet.’
‘Exactly,’ said Conrad. ‘Most cat reactions take between twenty and seventy milliseconds. But the average human reaction takes two hundred milliseconds. Even a human reflex action, where the thinking part of the brain isn’t involved, takes eighty milliseconds. So cats are always going to react more quickly than humans.’
‘It certainly worked out well today. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ said Conrad. ‘The man said that he had CCTV of us on his boat.’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘Do you think he was telling the truth?’
‘I’m sure of it. It’s the only way he would know that we were on his boat.’
‘And the police didn’t check his CCTV?’
‘Well, why would they? He attacked us on The Lark, so that was the crime scene. They could check his boat, but it wasn’t a crime scene, so there’d be no need to look at his CCTV footage. I hope.’
‘How did he find us?’
‘Well, if he had us on CCTV he knew what we looked like. He could have asked around, you know: did you see the lady with the handsome cat, what boat were they on, something like that?’
‘Handsome cat?’
Lulu laughed. ‘No need for modesty, Conrad. We both know how handsome you are. But the point I was making was that once he knew what we looked like, we wouldn’t be hard to find.’
The door opened. It was Detective Sergeant Colin Morris. He was the officer who had taken her statement. Two uniformed constables in high-vis jackets had arrived at The Lark and taken the man with the knife into custody. They had called a van which had taken the man away, and the constables had driven Lulu and Conrad to Greater Manchester Police Headquarters, a six-storey blue and grey building on what appeared to be a large industrial estate to the north of the city centre.
DS Morris was a big man with grey hair and round glasses, wearing a dark blue suit and a red and blue striped tie. He had made a big fuss of Conrad and told them about his own cat, a ginger, so Lulu had known straight away that he was one of the good guys. Lulu had immediately told him that she was a former police officer, but she hadn’t mentioned that she had taken the figurines from the Blue Moon. The story she had told him had been simple enough – that she and Conrad were on The Lark when the man had come aboard and waved a knife. They had defended themselves and called the police. It was a simple story and simple was best. Whether or not DS Morris believed it would come down to what the man with the knife had told him.
The detective closed the door and sat down opposite them. ‘Well, we’re pretty much done here,’ he said. ‘It seems you both had a lucky escape. Your attacker’s name is Brendan May, like the month.’
‘No relation to Brian May, I hope.’
DS Morris smiled. ‘Are you a Queen fan?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Freddie Mercury loved cats,’ said DS Morris. ‘He had ten, I believe.’
‘All the best people love cats,’ said Lulu. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, well, no relation. He’s local. Manchester born. He was released from prison last year after serving four years of an eight-year sentence for knifepoint robbery and is still on probation. The mere fact that he was in possession of that flick knife means he’ll be recalled to prison to complete his sentence. We’re just running fingerprint and DNA checks on the knife, but assuming they match his biometrics, he’ll be back inside by tonight.’
‘That’s good to know,’ said Lulu. ‘That he’ll be back in prison, not that he’s a violent robber, I mean.’
‘It makes it a lot easier all around,’ said the detective. ‘This way we avoid a trial, you don’t have to give evidence, we just revoke his parole. Unless you want to press charges? That’s totally up to you.’
‘I think we’re okay,’ said Lulu. ‘It’s not as if we were hurt.’
‘Thanks to Conrad, from what you said,’ said the detective. ‘Mr May needed three stitches, which is actually six fewer than his last victim, so no one is shedding any tears over that. And he just jumped at Mr May, you said? As he was about to stab you?’
‘He was fearless,’ said Lulu. ‘I was frozen with fright but Conrad jumped at him without a second thought. My hero.’ She reached over and rubbed the back of Conrad’s neck and he purred.
‘And you hit him with a frying pan, is that right?’
‘Yes, it was the first thing that came to hand.’
‘It knocked him right out, apparently.’
‘It was a Le Creuset.’
‘Ah, that explains it. They’re heavy.’
‘They are, yes. So did Mr May say why he was on my boat?’
DS Morris shook his head. ‘He’s not said anything other than to ask for a solicitor. He’s been through the system before, so he knows how to play the game. He knows that possession of a knife means he goes back to prison. He’ll just keep quiet and try to get parole again down the line. The more fuss he causes, the worse it’ll be for him.’
‘I suppose that makes sense,’ said Lulu. In a way she was glad that she didn’t have to explain in full what had happened, because that would mean telling the detective that she had broken into the Blue Moon and that Conrad had sneaked through the window in the first place.
‘The thing is, we found a bag full of what appear to be stolen items on his boat,’ said DS Morris. ‘Including some quite valuable jewellery and some very distinctive miniatures that were reported stolen last month. It seems that he made a habit of stealing from narrowboats. That’s possibly what he was doing on your boat, looking for something to steal.’
‘He tried to steal my watch and jewellery,’ said Lulu. ‘We had a lucky escape, that’s for sure.’
‘Do you need a lift back to your boat?’ asked DS Morris. ‘We’re a bit off the beaten track here. Between you and me, I think the powers that be didn’t want members of the public dropping by.’
‘Oh, that’s okay,’ said Lulu. ‘I feel like a walk.’
‘It’s not a pretty walk, to be honest, and it’s five miles,’ said DS Morris. ‘GMP will be happy to run you back – it’s the least we can do for you helping to get a vicious criminal back where he belongs.’