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

I shook my head. ‘No, we wanted to see him this morning but he refused. Sasha was annoyed. I think she’d hoped Lukas would speak to her once he realised the severity of the situation. She particularly wanted to talk to him about his financial situation. I assume you’re looking into that?’ I asked, with a quizzical look.

‘We know about him owing money to Chapman, if that’s what you mean,’ he replied. ‘We are actually quite good at finding this sort of information, you know.’ I knew that was a playful dig at me, so I raised an eyebrow at him.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

He chuckled. ‘You know full well.’

I folded my arms and adopted an expression of injured innocence, making him laugh.

‘Fine, it had absolutely nothing to do with you, and your habit of poking your nose in because you think we can’t solve things on our own.’

‘Hey, I never said that,’ I protested. ‘I never intend to get mixed up in things. It just sort of happens.’

‘Well, don’t let it happen this time, or I’ll set Forest on you,’ he joked. I kicked him lightly on the ankle and he pretended to clutch it in pain, then sat back and looked at me.

‘Anyway,’ I said, going back to our original conversation. ‘That’s what Sasha wanted to discuss with Lukas today, his debts.’

‘What about yesterday?’

‘We didn’t see him yesterday,’ I told him, after thinking for a moment. I could sometimes lose track of days when my job changed from week to week, but I knew we’d only seen Lukas on Wednesday and then again today.

Singh sat back and put his arm back along the bench again. ‘You might not have been to see him yesterday, but Sasha did.’

I stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, wondering if I’d misheard him. He was watching me, obviously interested in my reaction.

‘Didn’t she tell you she’d been to see him yesterday morning?’

I shook my head slowly. ‘No, she hasn’t mentioned it. In fact, I saw her yesterday afternoon and when I asked her how Lukas was, she told me she hadn’t had any information since Wednesday.’ Staring down at the grass, I went over our recent conversations in my mind. Could she have thought she’d told me about it, but actually she hadn’t? No, that didn’t make sense, because why would she have said she didn’t know how Lukas was doing? Maybe there was something they’d discussed that she couldn’t share with me, for confidentiality reasons.

Singh put his hand on my shoulder to get my attention back, making me jump.

‘Sorry, you were miles away there. I’m sure it’s nothing – I just assumed that she would have talked to you about it.’

‘No. She’ll have her reasons,’ I said, trying to brush it off, though I was feeling quite hurt. I thought Sasha trusted me, and I thought she genuinely wanted my help to try to prove Lukas’s innocence. But if she wasn’t sharing everything with me, maybe I couldn’t help her in the way she wanted. Could it even be possible that Lukas was guilty after all, and she knew? But then why would she want him to be released? I couldn’t think of a logical answer to any of these questions, and every route my brain went down came to a dead end.

‘Maybe she just went to see him to arrange his solicitor,’ Singh said, obviously concerned that he’d said something he shouldn’t, but once again I looked at him in confusion.

‘I didn’t know he even had a solicitor,’ I replied. ‘If he does, surely you arranged it?’

Singh shook his head. ‘No, we didn’t. We would have arranged for a duty solicitor to be assigned to him, but he’s got one who’s been hired for him. We were told that Sasha Thomas had arranged it.’

I frowned. Lukas had refused legal advice just as he’d refused to give a statement, so I didn’t know when this had changed. Sasha hadn’t told me that she’d done this, and frankly I was surprised that social services had the budget for a solicitor for one of their clients if they were entitled to legal aid. Unless … No, surely Sasha wouldn’t have paid for it herself?

I turned these thoughts over for a few moments, then pushed them to the back of my mind. It didn’t make sense, but I didn’t have all the information yet. When I next saw Sasha, I’d ask her to explain why she’d felt the need to hide these things from me, and hopefully she’d have a reasonable explanation.

‘Did Lukas speak to the solicitor?’ I asked.

Singh shook his head. ‘No, he brought an interpreter with him, but he sent them away.’

So it hadn’t been Lukas’s decision to hire him, presumably. It all seemed very strange, and I wondered what I was missing.

As we sat, I became increasingly aware of Singh’s presence next to me, and my mind went back to the conversation I’d had with Anna the other day. Until I’d said it to her, I hadn’t really admitted to myself how strong my attraction was to Singh, but now I’d said it out loud I couldn’t deny it. But I was in a relationship so I’d never really allowed myself to think about it before.

I still didn’t know what I was going to say to Max. Would he accept that I was happy with things the way they were, and wasn’t in any hurry to change them? I could imagine what Anna would say to me, if she could read my thoughts – would I be so reticent if it was Singh who had asked me? He was so different from Max; I always felt like he took the time to remember little things that were important to me, he was considerate of boundaries and didn’t behave as if I needed constant protection. But I couldn’t start thinking like that, and I gave myself a small shake.

Stealing a sideways glance at