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

put a hand on Caroline’s shoulder and pulled her back, but she shook her son off. I could see what Sasha meant – for a sixteen-year-old boy, Mariusz wasn’t very tall, and he was skinny. He had a mop of blond hair that fell in his eyes, and I got the feeling that he liked to hide under it. When he looked up at us I could see redness around his eyes, and he looked between us with an anguished frown.

Sasha smiled at Mariusz and was about to sign something, when Caroline stepped in between them.

‘No. You’re not speaking to my boy. I don’t want him having anything to do with his father, not after what he’s done, and you won’t convince me otherwise. I know he’s sent you here. Does he really think I’m going to let him see his son when he’s in prison?’ Her face contorted with a mixture of rage and disgust. ‘It was bad enough that he shacked up with another woman and got married so quickly, but I never thought he’d do something like this.’

‘Lukas hasn’t sent us, Caroline,’ I began, but she glared at me.

‘I’ve told you. Leave us alone.’ With that, she stepped back into the house and slammed the door. Sasha and I looked at each other, knowing we couldn’t do any more, but as we turned to walk back to the car I saw Mariusz watching us from the front window. He glanced behind him to check Caroline hadn’t noticed, then signed Sorry through the window.

I miss my dad. And Nadia, he told us, then turned away. Sasha put her hand up to sign something through the window, but the curtain fell back across, and Mariusz was gone.

Chapter 9

Sasha and I sat in my car after Caroline had told us to leave.

Do you want to go home? I asked her, but she shook her head.

No. While we’re here, I want to go back to Lukas’s house.

My heart sank. Sasha, I told you. I don’t want to get involved.

Look, this might not be important to you, but I need you to do this for me. I’ve done my best to help you out over the last few months. She gave me a pointed look. I’ve given you plenty of overtime, and I know you needed it.

I sighed. She was right, but I didn’t like her throwing it back in my face like this. I’d been able to pay off the last of my debts thanks to the overtime hours she’d persuaded her boss to sign off on.

Why can’t you leave it to the police? I asked.

I’ve seen clients in trouble with the police plenty of times before, she told me. But that’s always been for something they’ve actually done. I feel like because someone lives in a certain area, especially when they have a social worker for whatever reason, people will automatically assume they’re guilty. If the police aren’t willing to look past that, I’m going to have to do it for them.

Okay, I’ll come with you, but you’re taking full responsibility for this, I told her. What are you hoping to find out?

Sasha explained to me that she wanted to see if any of Lukas’s neighbours were in. Singh had told us that someone had reported a disturbance at Lukas and Nadia’s house on the day of the fire, and it hadn’t been the first time. If they were telling the truth, maybe they could tell her what that argument was about.

It was only when we pulled up in the street of terraced houses and looked at the blackened shell that was once Lukas’s home, that I realised we didn’t know which neighbour had given the statement. I had assumed it was one immediately next to Lukas, but that wasn’t necessarily the case, and even then that left us two to choose from. Each house was a mirror image of the one next to it, so the front doors were arranged in pairs. Looking out of my car window, I realised just how lucky both immediate neighbours had been, that the fire hadn’t spread to either of their houses on Tuesday night.

After a quick discussion, Sasha made the decision to start with the house whose front door nestled up to Lukas’s. The next issue to surmount was what to say – she could hardly tell the occupier that she didn’t believe Lukas was responsible for the fire. Nobody would appreciate a stranger coming to their door and suggesting they were lying.

We’ll have to think of another story, something that would make them willing to talk to you, I said.

Perhaps you could pretend to be a journalist? she suggested.

Not everyone wants their name printed in the paper, and it could make them more reluctant to talk to us. I wondered why it was suddenly me who had to take on this role.

Okay, then we need to come up with something that would suggest there’d be some benefit to them speaking to you.

After a few minutes’ discussion, we had something. The only problem was that Sasha wanted me to go and speak to the neighbours by myself – she didn’t think it’d be convincing if another deaf person happened to be looking into the fire, and there was a possibility someone would recognise her from visiting Lukas at home.

I promise it will just be this, she told me. This one thing, then I won’t ask you to do anything else.

Fine, I grumbled, as long as it is the last thing. Now I just had to make our story sound plausible.

As I was getting out of the car, I spotted a bright yellow notebook in the side pocket. Anna had bought it a couple of weeks ago and had left it there, so I took it with me in case I needed to make a note of anything, assuming she wouldn’t miss it. I crossed the road and knocked on the door of the house next to Lukas’s. I waited for