Chapter 18

* * * *

“No,” Francis protested. “I don’t want to go to hospital. I’m fine.” The paramedic was taping a dressing over his cut. “I have to stay here.”

“Is this about the cats?” Dez asked. When the police and paramedics had shown up, he’d let them in and had given them an account of what he’d witnessed. He knew one of the officers, vaguely. The other, a probationer, he’d never met. Now, both of them looked at him with an annoying amount of curiosity.

“I don’t want people going into the cat room and letting them escape,” Francis said.

“You really do need to go to the hospital, Mr. Green,” the paramedic said as she packed away her gear. “You probably have a concussion. I’m sure your cat will be fine.”

“Cats,” he clarified. “There are ten of them. For the café.”

She looked baffled.