Cat was relieved but still asked her if that was part of her job.

‘I make it my job. What chance would he have in that A&E scrum trying to make his voice heard? Shall I let you know what happens?’

‘Yes, please do – the hospital will report back to me but not for ages.’

She took the old man’s hand again. ‘You do know you have to go, don’t you? You have to be scanned and fully assessed and I can’t do that, but you won’t get to stay in unless they are sure you need to, they haven’t enough beds to keep fit and well people in them.’

‘You’ll get a thorough going-over,’ Sadie said.

‘Makes me sound like a carpet.’ But he winked at Cat, and the wink gave her the reassurance she wanted. If Lionel Brown was making a joke of going to hospital, then he was reconciled to it.

Three

‘Hey, you!’ Cat slowed at the corner of Starly Square, lowering the window to call her brother. A few minutes later, they were sitting at a corner table in the Dreamcatcher Cafe. Cat looked at the menu.

‘I once had dandelion coffee here, but it’s gone. Espresso. Cappuccino. Flat white . . . heavens, quite normal.’

‘Nothing in Starly is normal. Go out there, it’s like walking through a pack of tarot cards. Do you remember Dava? And that guy who called himself a psychic surgeon?’

Cat shuddered. ‘And Freya,’ she said.

Freya Graffham, the detective sergeant, victim of a psychopath, who had engaged in a killing spree in Lafferton, some ten years ago. She had also been the first woman in Simon’s life Cat had thought he might actually have married. Now, he met her eye briefly as their coffees came.

‘This isn’t real milk.’

‘Of course it isn’t real milk, this is a vegan cafe, it’s a dairy-free zone. It’ll be soya or oat or almond.’

‘Or breast, even.’ Simon raised his hand-thrown pottery mug, decorated with the symbol for the star sign Aquarius.

‘Don’t be mean.’ Cat lifted her own cappuccino with the design for Pisces.

‘Anyway, what’s brought you up here?’

They traded news and cases, catching up for the first time since Christmas.

‘What a way to die,’ Cat said, ‘on the floorboards of a freezing cold flat above a quack herbalist, with a syringe in your arm.’

‘You don’t know the half of it – you in your private patient world.’

‘You’d be surprised. Anyway, that’s not like you – the disapproval.’

‘Sorry, sis. I don’t really . . . I’m just feeling a bit below par.’

‘Hope you’re not getting flu.’

‘Had my jab. Which is more than you can say for half the station, apparently. They get it provided, nurse in the station, and they still don’t go for it.’

‘Don’t start me on anti-vaxxers – odd for policemen, though.’