The Silent Suspect by Nell Pattison (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud .TXT) 📗

make any sense. Lukas has been doing so well, his mental health has improved dramatically, and I was going to recommend he was taken off my caseload. He didn’t need my support any more. She turned to me. You told me he looked horrified when he was told the fire was set on purpose. And that he looked shocked when he found out Nadia had been strangled.

I nodded. ‘I haven’t known Lukas very long – I’ve just been in a few addiction support meetings with him and Sasha – but I don’t think he’s that good an actor.’ I spoke and signed at the same time, so both Singh and Sasha could follow the conversation.

Singh shook his head. ‘What do you want me to say? I have the evidence, and he won’t give us anything to suggest he’s innocent. Paige, you were there the whole time, you know what happened. I was as surprised as you were when he refused to comment at all, but I can’t exactly take this to my DI and say I think he’s innocent despite all of this. She’ll want this case closed and off my desk.’

‘But why would he call me, if he’d killed Nadia? And why would he go into the house when it was on fire?’ I asked. ‘He could have just set fire to the house and then waited until a neighbour saw it and called the fire brigade. By getting me involved, surely that would have been too big a risk?’

‘Or it gave him the perfect witness,’ Singh replied, looking me in the eyes. ‘You believed what he told you, and he obviously thought he’d left it long enough that the fire would destroy any evidence.’

Sasha and I looked at each other and I shrugged. Singh was right – there was nothing we could do. Lukas had been given the opportunity to ask for a solicitor, had refused, and had made the choice not to respond to any of the detectives’ questions. Even though I couldn’t understand what Lukas was doing, I could see it from Singh’s point of view.

When Sasha had arrived, she’d asked to see Lukas straight away, but Singh had asked if she wouldn’t mind sitting down and speaking to him first. That’s how we came to be there, in that room, all baffled by what had happened.

Paige tells me he was distraught last night when he saw the firefighters pull Nadia’s body out of the house and he realised she was dead, Sasha reminded Singh.

‘And plenty of murderers feel that way about their victims,’ he replied gently. ‘You’re a social worker. You must know that domestic abuse is almost always followed by a period of remorse. That remorse doesn’t last, however.’

He wasn’t abusive, Sasha insisted. There was no history of any problems, with either Nadia or his ex-wife.

Singh sat back and put Lukas’s file to one side. ‘Okay. Tell me about Lukas. Why are you involved with him?’

Sasha blinked and a startled look passed across her face quickly, but a split second later it was gone. Pulling a much bigger file out of the heavy bag sitting next to her, Sasha sat it on her lap and gave Singh a searching look.

Are you just humouring me?

He sighed. ‘I want to understand Lukas Nowak better. I want to know how we got here. Even with the evidence we’ve got, I’d like to make sure we’ve covered all the bases in case he changes his mind and decides to give us a statement at any point.’

Fine, Sasha replied, turning to a page in the middle of her file. I became involved with Lukas about five years ago. He was going through a period of deep depression following his separation from his ex-wife, Caroline, who had been very evasive regarding custody of their son, Mariusz. He became dependent on alcohol, and threatened suicide on two occasions.

Singh turned to a page in his file. ‘We have two separate reports on the system of him being found on the footpath of the Humber Bridge, late at night. I assume these are the two occasions you’re referring to.’

Yes. He’s been doing very well with a programme of medication and therapy, and his mental health is much more stable these days. He sees an addiction counsellor on a regular basis, and from what I’ve seen he’s been very honest and up front when he’s struggling.

‘Was the alcohol a problem when he was with Caroline?’

She looked up at Singh. No, that started after they broke up. I know what you’re suggesting. There were no complaints of domestic abuse, no signs of anything physical between Lukas and Caroline. No phone calls to the police from neighbours, none of the tell-tale signs I’d normally look for. It was a bad break-up, and Lukas felt that Caroline was keeping him from seeing Mariusz.

‘Was there any truth in that?’ Singh asked, picking up a pen from the desk.

Sasha grimaced. It’s a difficult one. He insisted she had told him he wouldn’t be allowed any custody because he was deaf and not British, but there wasn’t anything in writing. She didn’t text him anything that he could show us, so we only have his word for it. However, once we were involved and trying to support them to have regular contact, she was evasive. It took a long time to make concrete arrangements, and she would find reasons to change plans at short notice.

‘Did she ever give you a reason for this?’

No, nothing that suggested she was worried about Mariusz spending time with his father. She leant forward. You and I will have both come across a lot of manipulative people in our professional lives, and that was what it felt like, to me. Do you understand?

Singh nodded. ‘I do. So let’s assume you’re correct, and he has no history of violence, even unreported. How do you explain him going to the pub last night? We managed to speak to a couple of people who saw him there, and