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

Okay, so not scared.

Unless he’s scared of the person who killed her. That’s why he’s not saying anything.

Sasha’s eyes lit up. Of course, that sounds plausible. He won’t admit to something he hasn’t done, but he knows if he tells the police who it was they might be able to get to him.

Could he be protecting someone? I asked. Maybe he knows who killed Nadia, but doesn’t want them to go to prison?

Sasha looked doubtful. Apart from his wife and son, I can’t see Lukas protecting anyone that fiercely that he’d go to jail for them. Mariusz got on well with Nadia, and he’s only sixteen. No, I think you were right the first time.

She stood up and began pacing. So how are we going to find out who he’s scared of?

I was about to offer a suggestion, but then stopped myself. Just over a year earlier, I had been asked to interpret for the police when a deaf child had been killed. The child was Anna’s goddaughter, and I’d found myself doing things that were dangerous and stupid, which ultimately led to my sister being gravely injured. When I’d first met Sasha, I was supporting the police when they investigated the murder of a teacher at Lincoln School for the Deaf, and I’d ended up trying to rescue a student from the killer. If I allowed Sasha to lead me down this route, would I end up in danger and at odds with the police yet again?

Besides that, Singh had taken me aside before we left and reminded me that as a witness I couldn’t be involved with the case. He meant that I wouldn’t be asked to interpret for any further interviews with Lukas, but I had a feeling he also was referring to my work with Sasha. He knew what I was like from the previous times we’d worked together, and how easily I found myself caught up in these things, but this time it had to be different. I shook my head.

Sasha, we’re not the police. It’s not our job to look into it, I told her, aware of my own hypocrisy, but not wanting to be drawn into something dangerous again. Besides, I trusted Singh; he was an excellent detective, and if there was more to this case than was obvious at first, I knew he’d find it.

Sasha frowned at me, then sat down again and reached for my hands. She squeezed them and looked into my eyes, before pulling away again to sign.

I don’t want to let anyone down again. She looked at me knowingly and I could tell she was referring to the incident at Lincoln School for the Deaf last year. She still blamed herself for not realising what was going on, and I sympathised with her.

But, Sasha, what makes you so certain that Lukas is innocent? I knew I risked her getting angry by asking again, but I wanted to be sure myself. He was covered in bruises. How do you know he didn’t fight with Nadia and end up killing her?

Her mouth twitched as she thought about how to respond. I don’t even know for certain myself, she signed eventually. But right now, I want to be certain. He hasn’t confessed, and he told you it was someone else. That’s enough for me.

Sasha’s reaction hadn’t completely surprised me. I’d seen how passionate she could be when she fought for her clients’ rights, and I knew how proud she was of the work Lukas had done to improve his life and his health over the last couple of years. She certainly wasn’t a pushover, though. I remembered one time when I’d just started working for her, he’d missed a few of his addiction support meetings, and she gave him a talking-to about his responsibilities to himself and his family. Being blunt with her clients seemed to make them respect her all the more, though, and Lukas hadn’t missed a meeting since.

Okay, I signed. I’m not going to stop you, but we have to pass on anything we find out to the police, I added.

Sasha agreed. So we need to work out who Lukas is afraid of, she said.

I let her go on for a while, laying out her theory and telling me what she was going to have a look at, but I didn’t offer any extra suggestions. I remembered what Rav had said to me, and I intended to take it to heart and not get involved.

As I walked out of the building, I pulled out my phone and scrolled down to Singh’s name, my thumb hovering over the call button. He should know what Sasha and I had been talking about, and I should tell him what Lukas told me in the hospital. But what if I was right about him trying to manipulate me, and by doing that I could be unwittingly helping a murderer? No, it could wait until I knew a few more facts. Putting my phone away, I told myself I’d give it a day or two before I spoke to Singh, and hopefully by then the police would have the answers anyway.

Chapter 7

By the time I got home that afternoon I was exhausted. I shut the door to my flat and leant against it for a minute, my head still swimming. I didn’t know whether to trust Sasha’s assessment of the situation. She knew Lukas better than I did; that much was true. Hopefully she would know how to persuade him to tell the police what he knew.

I went through to the kitchen and put the kettle on, and a moment later I heard keys in the door. My sister, Anna, had been living with me for around a year now. She worked at a university in Hull, running their new Deaf Studies department, and her enthusiasm for her job still shone through several months after she had started. I smiled at her as she put