No Going Back by Casey Kelleher (black male authors TXT) 📗

that her husband was capable of doing such a thing, and the state he was in now, he wouldn’t be doing himself any favours by admitting so in front of the police.

‘Well, someone’s got to look out for her, haven’t they?!’ Pete said, glaring at his son-in-law, who was sitting slumped in the corner of the room, looking extremely sorry for himself, and as per was being about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Pete was raging with the lad.

‘Where’s your concern? Where’s your need for vengeance? It’s just you don’t look too fucking bothered to me, Ashley.’

‘Dad, leave it, yeah?’ Shelby said, sensing her father’s fury and feeling guilty herself now that her actions and words last night had only added to the growing friction between the two men. ‘None of this is Ashley’s fault. He had a bad night too. Christ, what are the chances of us both getting attacked on the same night, huh?’

‘You were both attacked?’ Holder said now, eyeing Ashley closely – both officers seeing the bruising on the man’s swollen eye. His lip was cut and bulging too.

Up until now, Ashley had sat so silently in the corner of the room that Lucy and Holder had barely even glanced at the man. Now he shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

‘Are you okay, Ashley?’ Lucy said then. The genuine concern in her voice hit a nerve with Ashley. No one else in the room seemed to give a shit that he was attacked last night too. None of them had a clue about the world of shit he was in right now. And he couldn’t let on.

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Ashley said, grateful that DC Lucy Murphy seemed to actually care. ‘It was nothing. It wasn’t an attack as such. Not like this. It was just kids messing about. Trying it on. It wasn’t anything major.’ He tried to shrug the whole incident off, not wanting to draw attention to himself.

‘Ash! Dad said that he found you in the alley down the side of Smokes. He said that you’d been left for dead. You could have died from pneumonia being left outside all night, unconscious,’ Shelby said then, incredulously, knowing that Ashley was only playing it down for her sake. She felt guilty now; she hadn’t even noticed the state he was in when he’d first walked into the delivery room. She’d been so caught up in Riley that she hadn’t even properly looked at him. She had just assumed he’d been up to no good last night. She realised now that she’d overreacted when she should have just stayed at home, instead of traipsing over to her parents’ house in the middle of the night, just to make a point. None of this would have happened if she’d just had a little more faith in her husband.

‘My dad went out looking for him in the early hours this morning so that he wouldn’t miss Riley’s birth. And found him, thankfully. I guess we’re both lucky, huh!’ Shelby informed the officers, oblivious to the heated look the two men exchanged now that she was distracted.

‘Hmm, lucky!’ Pete snorted, shaking his head and glaring at Ashley, doing everything in his power not to lose control and blurt out the truth to Shelby once and for all. That Ashley might have had a kicking last night, but he’d actually been found tucked up in some hostess tart’s bed. It would break his daughter’s heart.

‘I’m going to need to take a statement from you as well,’ Lucy said to Ashley, after seeing the dubious look on her colleague’s face which mirrored her own thoughts.

As much as they both knew that coincidences did happen and sometimes the truth was stranger than fiction, they could also sense that something was going on here. Ashley Cooke was acting cagey, as if he had something to hide. And the fact that he was barely reacting to his wife being attacked last night spoke volumes too.

‘Why do you need a statement from me? I told you. It was nothing, just kids.’

‘We need to rule everything out, Ashley. Just in case the assaults are linked in some way. Someone might have a grudge against you. They might have then taken the grudge out on Shelby,’ Holder intervened. ‘Smokes nightclub did you say? We can always take a look at the security footage.’

‘There’s no need. You’d just be wasting your time. You’re wasting your time with all of this. Even Shelby’s attack. People get away with stuff all the time. Whoever it was, you won’t find him.’

‘How can you be so sure? Do you recognise him?’ Pete interrupted, forcing Ashley to get up and take a proper look at the image on the screen.

‘Why would I?’ Ashley shook his head, flustered, as everyone in the room turned their attention on him then. He could feel the heat of his face, burning. His voice cracking as he tried to speak. He knew what his father-in-law was thinking when he glared at him. That Ashley was wracked with guilt about what happened last night – only the man didn’t know the half of it.

‘Because you’ve lived on that poxy estate for years. Does he look familiar? You might recognise the sick fucker,’ Pete bellowed, incensed again at how unhelpful and unconcerned Ashley was being. He couldn’t understand how Ashley could just sit there so calmly when his wife and child had been put in such danger.

‘No. I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him before.’

All Ashley could think about was the threat that the Boland brothers had made last night. That they’d been sending someone round to his, to dish out a warning to Shelby. Only this was a whole other level.

If they’d do this to him as a warning, what would they do when he didn’t pay up? Because unless he came clean to Pete about the money he owed and begged the man for a loan, there was no other way that he could get his hands