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

I said. This wasn’t a question, it was a statement, and she knew there was no point denying it.

I did. I wanted to make sure he had someone decent to defend him, and you don’t know who you’re going to get with legal aid.

I nodded. All of this is stuff you could have told me, Sasha. If you want me to help you, you need to trust me.

She hesitated for a moment, and I wondered if there was something else she’d been keeping from me, something that even Singh didn’t know about.

I promise to be honest with you from now on, she told me. But please, Paige, I need your help.

Do you really think there’s a chance of you finding evidence against someone else? I asked her. I thought about my conversations with Jill Adams and Roy Chapman, and the second house fire. We haven’t got anywhere so far.

The fierce light came back into her eyes as she nodded. I do.

I took a deep breath. Okay. In which case, I want you to come with me tomorrow to speak to DI Forest. It went against all my own instincts, to voluntarily talk to the DI when she had always wanted to see the back of me in the past, but I thought that might be the only way to convince Sasha to give up on this idea. It was obvious that I wasn’t going to change her mind, so maybe the detective inspector in charge of the case would be able to.

Sasha looked unsure. I don’t see what that will achieve.

Maybe there will be an avenue they haven’t looked into, that you can tell them about, I suggested. And maybe they can share with us what evidence they have against Lukas.

Do you think they’d be willing to do that?

Knowing Forest, possibly not, but it can’t hurt to ask. You’ll be there in a professional capacity, as Lukas’s social worker, and maybe she’ll do you the courtesy of answering your questions.

Sasha nodded slowly, not completely convinced but obviously willing to agree to it if it meant I’d continue to help her. All I could hope was that Forest would lay things out clearly to show Sasha it was futile, rather than just throwing us out of her office.

Make an appointment to see the DI tomorrow, I suggested. Have we got some free time in the diary?

She pulled out her phone to check, and we moved on to discussing which clients she would need to see over the next few days, some of whom she’d cancelled appointments with last week, in order to see Lukas. Whilst I didn’t relish talking about work on a Sunday, I thought it was a good idea to help Sasha focus on the rest of her caseload, instead of devoting all her energy to just one man.

When she’d gone, I stood by the window for a while, watching people coming and going. My chat with her had kept my mind off Max for a while, but now the flat was empty again I couldn’t avoid the thoughts that were cropping up. Now I had time to think about it, I was sure it had been coming for a while, my desire to end our relationship, but that didn’t stop me from feeling as if a rug had been pulled out from under me.

Checking my phone, I noticed a message from Gem, telling me that we were going out that evening. I didn’t protest, knowing she wouldn’t accept any excuses, even though I would rather hide away from the world for a while. As I stood and thought about it, my phone rang in my hand. It was Max. After a brief inward battle, I decided to ignore it. I put my phone down on the table and watched it until it stopped ringing.

Perhaps a night out with my best friend was exactly what I needed.

Chapter 20

I felt like I needed some fresh air, so I walked up into the village and went to sit on the green, near the children’s play area. Any evidence that the funfair had been there had been cleared away, except for some patches of grass that had been churned to mud. The sun was warm and there was a slight breeze, and something about it lifted my spirits a little. There were some children playing on the climbing frame, and their excited chatter drifted over to me as I tried to clear my mind a little.

Checking my phone, I found myself thinking about Max’s call. Did I want him to rant at me and call me a heartless bitch? Or did I want complete radio silence, suggesting he hadn’t thought about me at all? I didn’t know the answer to that question. Should I call him back? If he wanted to talk I should at least let him say whatever it was he wanted to say, but if it was going to be an angry rant I didn’t think I could take that right now. I wanted to be able to judge his emotional state before talking to him, in order to take my own feelings into account. A small part of me thought I deserved to be called every name under the sun, but then I had never intended to upset him. If his feelings were stronger than mine, there was no way to end it without hurting him.

Even though we’d only been together for just over a year I was now used to being in a relationship, and the idea of being single again was uncomfortable. Before Max, I’d been single for three years, and it hadn’t done me any harm. I could do it again now, without a problem, and I’d always rolled my eyes at people who couldn’t cope if they weren’t in a relationship. But right now I wanted to stay with the familiar, and I knew it was going to be a difficult adjustment. Change was terrifying.

Deciding against calling him back, I put my