The next morning, Lorne and Catherine lay in bed a long time, luxuriating in each other before they showered and dressed, and it was ten past nine when Lorne turned on the espresso machine, then opened the freezer. "Only three croissants left, we need another shopping trip."

"Almost out of everything fresh too. Do you actually use a niqab and chador to go shopping?"

"Yeah, it's one of the best disguises. Most turn their eyes away. Few dare question them anymore, there've been too many religious discrimination charges. It's gone overboard."

"Strange, how overboard it's gone. The Quran tells them to dress with modesty by covering their breasts and genitals. They must be huge down there to need all that cover." She giggled.

"I can go out after breakfast, unless Denise calls. I don't want to impose on her to do more shopping." He looked in the fridge. "We could do ham and cheese croissants again, there's a nice piece of goat's cheese here for variety. How's that sound?"

She looked up from grinding the coffee. "Good for me. Maybe I could do..." She was interrupted by the phone's ring.

He clicked to speaker. "Hello."

"Hi Lorne, it's Denise. I'm really... I'd love to come up and talk with Catherine again."

"Have you had breakfast?" Catherine called as she moved toward the phone.

"Coffee only so far. Sort of feeling —"

"Come on up, we're trying to sort out what we're going to have ourselves."

Catherine sat on the couch with Denise, calming and comforting her as Lorne prepared the open-faced croissant sandwiches. Then they all moved to the balcony to share from the platter and sip their espressos.

"Tough to do alone." Denise looked at each in turn. "I really appreciate your allowing me to barge in like this."

"Funny, a while ago we were talking of phoning you, but didn't want to impose." She laughed. "Lorne was thinking of converting to Islam to go shopping."

"Damn! I was feeling so sorry for myself being alone with this, that I forgot you're like prisoners here. You must be out of everything. I'm not on 'til noon. I can do my own shopping while I'm there."

"Relax. We won't starve. I've stocked this place for long sieges. Not fresh, but sustaining, not the healthiest with all additives and preservatives, but —"

"I saw that from your shopping list the other day. You're really into fresh and local. Didn't need to leave the periphery of the store for you." She smiled at Lorne. "So, when you're not running from murderers, what do you do?"

He looked at Catherine, paused, then shrugged and saw her slight nod. "We're both writers, wine and food writers."

"God, have you been following the restaurant review scam thing? Amazing how it's spreading. Gone absolutely viral. The whole planet seems to be adding to it now."

"We've been a bit out of the current events loop, holed-up here." Lorne paused, saw Catherine's, pursed lips and then her nod. "My hypocritic blog post started it. That's why we're here."

"Fuck! Pardon my language, but fuck! What a great post!"

"Pardon granted." Catherine giggled. "We speak it fluently."

"So, you're the Unknown Diner?"

Lorne nodded to her. "Now three people know."

"So, who's K ate? My other favourite reviewer, the one who's pushed this thing to gazillions of likes."

Catherine raised her hand, grinned and wiggled her fingers.

"Fuck! My two favourite foodies, and I'm grocery-shopping for you. Oh, my God."

"We haven't had time to do anything but glance at the response. Noticed it had gone viral on Twitter, but we've been buried digging through crap." Lorne shrugged. "Guess we should take a look. We have a hook well sunk now."

"You've someone hooked?"

"We don't know how big yet, but a long way up from a minnow. Connected to the current restaurant scam. I've followed threads back to the restaurant fraud trial at the beginning of the century when the sleazy lawyer got the Mafia off."

"The collapsing restaurant thing? Strange, wasn't that?"

"Stranger that the same person is connected to the current one."

"The same person?"

"Robotham. The lawyer at my trial. I don't know what trickery he pulled to spring the Montreal Family, but I'm sure he earned a lot of favours from it. He's apparently running their current restaurant scam. I'm not sure yet whether it's only locally or regionally or if it's nationally."

"We've wondered where they all went after their drug market began collapsing. It's been pleasantly quiet." She laughed. "Except for the usual real estate scams and the regular stock market corruption, it's been rather peaceful."

Lorne ran his fingers through his hair and stared blankly over the rooftops beyond the balcony railing. "I've found some stuff your people appear to have missed."

"We're aware we miss a lot of things. An overwhelming amount of stuff to handle sometimes. What do you have?"

"Two, and there are likely more, but I've dug through two cases where he's led to acquittals of paedophile priests. There's clear evidence through email threads of conspiring fraudulent testimony from Frick. You remember Doctor Frick?"

"Never forget him for what he tried to do to you." She stared at him for a long time. "What an evil man he was."

"We suspect he's also a major player with the restaurant thing, doing the market manipulation."

"This is way too big for you alone, Lorne. Even for the two of you. Far too huge. We need to get you connected. Would you like some support, some help with this?"

"We'd love that." He sighed and nodded to her. "Yeah, we'd really love that. Can I pull you another espresso?"