Free The Catch by Tom Bale

Scott?’
    ‘Uh, yes. Caitlin. Well, Cate, actually.’
    ‘Right. And is this Hove, Actually?’
    Her brain was so scrambled that by the time she got the reference it was too late to laugh. Feeling like a halfwit, she heard herself say, ‘No, we’re still in Brighton here.’
    He nodded, holding his warrant card at chest height. ‘Lame joke. I’m DS Guy Thomsett. This is my colleague, DC Bill Avery.’
    He indicated a heavyset man with a mop of russet-coloured hair, trudging up the hill from a badly parked Renault Saloon. Avery had a pink, blotchy complexion, a misshapen nose and a decidedly unfriendly scowl.
    ‘Bugger to park round here,’ he muttered in a soft Yorkshire accent.
    ‘You get used to it,’ Cate said, wishing there was some way she could invite Thomsett into the house while leaving his subordinate on the pavement.
    As she led them into the living room, she couldn’t help glancing at the spot where Martin had kicked over her wine. Thank God it had been white and not red: they might have thought it was blood.
    Thomsett, she noticed, was nearly as tall as Martin, but not lanky or awkward with it. He took a seat at one end of the sofa, and as Cate sat at the other end she spotted flecks of grey in his hair. Same as Martin, but it suited him better. She put him in his mid-to-late thirties.
    Avery, who was perhaps five years older and a good deal shorter, chose to stand almost directly in front of her, his arms crossed, the muscles bulging beneath his crumpled suit. A rugby player in his spare time, or a boxer.
    ‘We’re here in connection with a man named Hank O’Brien.’ Thomsett was watching her intently enough to see her flinch. ‘May I ask how well you know him?’
    ‘Hardly at all.’ The detectives gave her a second or two to elaborate, but Cate knew how that game was played and did nothing to fill the silence.
    Avery’s scowl intensified. ‘When did you last see him?’
    ‘Yesterday evening.’
    ‘And where was this?’
    ‘At a pub. The Horse and Hounds, near Partridge Green. I had a meeting with him.’
    He exchanged a glance with Thomsett. ‘Concerning?’
    ‘A property rental,’ Cate said. ‘My mother owns Compton Property Services.’
    ‘I know it.’ Now Thomsett looked sombre. ‘We found your number on his phone. He texted you at ten-oh-four.’
    ‘Yes, to say he was running late. He was supposed to meet at—’ She frowned. ‘What do you mean, you found my number?’
    ‘I have some bad news, I’m afraid. I have to inform you that Hank O’Brien is dead.’
    Cate stared at Thomsett in astonishment. This time it barely registered how closely both men were studying her reaction.
    ‘How? Did he have a heart attack or something?’
    ‘No. He was knocked down and killed on the B2135, approximately two-thirds of a mile from the pub.’
     
    ****
     
    Bree Tyler was the epitome of a trophy wife. Aged twenty-seven, a former swimwear and lingerie model, she was tall and lithe and perfectly honed. Hailing from Whitehawk, one of the city’s most notorious estates, she was so proud of having outgrown her humble origins that, far from concealing the fact, she broadcast it to practically everyone she met.
    Her husband, Jimmy, was more than twice her age. Short and thin with a big pot-belly, his hair slicked back like a 1950s greaser, he was an old-fashioned East Ender who talked like he’d just stepped out of a low-budget British crime movie, one of those films where everyone says: ‘It’s all gorn fahking pear-shaped.’
    Robbie had no idea what Jimmy did for a living: Bree was worryingly vague about it. All she could say was that he spent his days at the horses or the dogs, mostly but not always in southern England. Whether gambling was his main source of income, or whether he used the gambling to launder money from elsewhere, Robbie frankly preferred not to know. But on the days when Jimmy travelled further afield, Bree liked nothing more than to summon Robbie for a horizontal