Cambridge Blue by Alison Bruce Page B

victim who had identified someone resembling Ratty, but with the DNA match and the victim’s statement, Ratty – if found and if cooperative – would still be pretty redundant; he just wasn’t the kind of witness that juries trusted.
    Goodhew’s face tingled in the cold air; clear spring nights sucked the warmth from the flat open streets and left early-morning Cambridge encased in a frosty shell. He wiggled his nose, trying to restore the circulation there, hoping it would stop running. It didn’t, so he dabbed at it with the only square of clean tissue he could find in his jacket pocket.
    The 6 a.m. sun stretched gradually over the rooftops and touched the second storeys of the locked shops and cafés. At ground level, however, there was still no hint of dawn as he walked down the grey slab passageway of Bradwell’s Court towards the coach station: the master bedroom for the city’s down-and-outs.
    He kept to the centre of the pedestrian walkway, equidistant from the doorways on either side. Only the newsagent at the far end would reveal any official activity this early; all other signs of life came from the homeless.
    No one occupied the blankets heaped at the entrance to East Anglia Pet Supplies on his left this morning, but on his right, a blue nylon sleeping bag in the portico of the discount book store stirred and groaned. The black-and-tan terrier curled beside it scratched, turned over, then resettled itself against its master’s stomach. Even with the occupant’s head buried under the covers, Goodhew knew it wasn’t Ratty. Too tall for a start. The man and his dog were the only ones camped out in Bradwell’s Court itself.
    Goodhew came out the other side to find the bus bays empty, apart from the end space, where the first London coach of the day still waited for non-existent passengers, its engine idling.
    Logically, Goodhew should have turned right, past the first bus, and walked a circuit back to the shopping centre, via the smaller, edge-of-town stores. He glanced out, past the coach station and over Christ’s Piece, where tree-lined paths crossed the common land and late daffodils sprouted. The sun had melted the frost and the grass stood bright and dewy in the growing daylight.
    It was a much more appealing prospect than poking at cardboard boxes behind office outbuildings. He could check for sleepers on the park benches. He never understood how anyone could survive outside when the day’s warmth evaporated from the Fens, and he expected each curled-up body to have died in the night, frozen to its draughty slatted bed.
    But from where he stood, each bench appeared unoccupied, and he decided to check the public toilets instead before walking further.
    They were housed in an old red-brick square block with individual cubicles along each side, and had been recently refurbished with a range of gadgets, including cisterns that automatically flushed upon the opening of the doors, and soap and water dispensers that squirted and sprayed without any actual physical contact. It would only take a few more such advances in technology, and bums wouldn’t even be touching seats.
    Goodhew checked the doors one by one and found that none were occupied, they were obviously too compact for even the dispossessed to spend the night in. It was as he turned the final corner that he finally found him.
    Ratty stood, tilted back, with his shoulder blades against the outside wall. He was smoking a roll-up, holding it between index finger and thumb as it sat in the centre of the tunnel made by his other curled-over fingers. Goodhew almost felt that Ratty was waiting for him, perhaps resigned to being tracked down and choosing to get it over with.
    Even when Goodhew spoke, Ratty continued to stare vacantly across Christ’s Piece and Goodhew quickly deduced that he hadn’t emerged from the cooperative side of his sleeping bag that morning. ‘Did you know I was looking for you, Rat?’
    Ratty spoke slowly, his voice