The Silent Suspect by Nell Pattison (epub e ink reader .TXT) 📕

‘Are you okay? I think we lost you again for a minute there.’

‘Sorry,’ I said, shaking myself once more.

‘Anything I can help with?’

I fervently hoped my face wouldn’t betray me as I gave a short laugh. ‘No, I don’t think so. Personal stuff.’ He definitely couldn’t help with my confused feelings about him and Max, and I didn’t think I should tell Singh just how much Sasha had kept from me, in case it jeopardised her relationship with the police. Whatever she’d done, it wouldn’t do her clients any good if she antagonised the people she was supposed to be allied with. Telling Singh that she’d lied to me would hardly encourage him to trust her. I thought about what Sasha and I had been planning, too. If Singh knew what I would be doing tomorrow, I didn’t think he’d be very happy with me.

‘Everything okay with Max? I assume you’re still seeing each other?’ There was a forced casual tone to his voice, which intrigued me, but now wasn’t the time to start reading anything into it.

‘Yeah, fine. He’s, er, asked me to move in with him.’ I groaned inwardly, regretting the words the instant they were out of my mouth. Why? Why did I tell him?

‘Oh. Well, congratulations.’ He looked down at the grass rather than at me when he said this.

‘Maybe,’ I replied with a shrug. He looked up at me then, his eyebrows raised. ‘I don’t know …’

‘You don’t know what?’ he asked quietly. I looked him in the eye and for a moment I felt like something passed between us, something that we both should have put into words a long time ago. I was thinking of what to say, when his phone rang, making him wince.

He stood up and walked a short distance away to answer it, and I used the time to look at him carefully. Ever since I’d first met him, Rav had been a reassuring presence whenever I worked for the police, but we’d rarely seen each other outside of a professional capacity. Maybe we should try and spend some time together socially, to see if I still felt the same when we weren’t discussing strictly work matters. It might give me a chance to see how he felt, too.

I shook myself. What was I thinking? I was with Max, and I was happy with him. I was. I just didn’t really see us living together, that was all. A small voice in the back of my mind asked me if that meant I wasn’t in fact happy, but I silenced it straight away. Whatever the situation between me and Max, it wasn’t right to be thinking about spending more time with Singh.

Singh was walking back towards me, a rueful expression on his face. ‘That was DI Forest,’ he said. ‘I need to get back to the station. Do you mind dropping me off?’

‘No, that’s fine. I should be getting home anyway.’

We didn’t speak as we walked back to my car, and I tried to keep my mind on Lukas and what Sasha and I could do to help him. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting Roy Chapman the following morning, but it could definitely get us some answers, and as Sasha continued to point out, I owed her this. The overtime she’d given me had helped me to pay off the last of the debts my ex-boyfriend had left me with, but I was starting to wonder if that assistance from Sasha was worth what she was asking me to do. And from what Singh had said, should I really be trusting Sasha as much as I had been doing? She obviously didn’t trust me enough to keep me fully in the loop. In which case, should I be doing the things she asked?

I agonised over it all the way back to the police station. Singh could obviously tell there was something bothering me, but he didn’t press me on it this time. After he got out, he leant back in and gave me a quick smile.

‘It was nice to sit and have a chat, if only briefly,’ he said. I was busy thinking of a reply when he waved a goodbye, shut the door and jogged into the station. Hopefully he wouldn’t be in trouble for being away from his desk in the middle of the afternoon.

On the drive home, my mind kept flitting between Lukas and Sasha, Singh and Max. I had too many things going on in my life at the moment, and my head couldn’t cope with it all. Sooner or later I was going to have to stop being passive and letting things just happen around me, and take some decisive action. The problem was that the thought of any particular action left me paralysed with anxiety about whether or not it was the right thing to do. Anna and I had planned an evening out tonight, so hopefully that would help to distract me and give me the perspective I needed to make a decision once and for all.

Chapter 14

The music and lights of the funfair were overwhelming after the confusing day I’d had, but right now it provided exactly the distraction I needed.

Do you want some candyfloss? I asked Anna, pointing to a stall that was festooned with plastic bags of bright pink and blue confectionery.

My sister shook her head. Not yet. I want to go on the Waltzer!

I groaned. The funfair came to our village every year and set up on the green, but I usually found a way to avoid going on any of the rides. I didn’t like rides in general; a day out to a theme park was always pretty dull for me, because I was the one hanging around on a bench holding everyone else’s bags while my friends queued for two hours for some monstrosity that flung them upside down seventeen times.

You’ll be going on it on your own,