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

I picked up my bag and hurried back out of the building, cursing myself for being so stupid. Getting in my car, I rested my head on the steering wheel and felt tears welling up behind my eyes. This made me even angrier with myself; if it wasn’t bad enough that I’d put myself in a difficult situation, now I was crying about it like a child.

Taking a deep breath and scrubbing the heel of my hand across my eyes, I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out my notebook. On the page where I’d written about the gym and the drugs raid I made some notes about what I’d seen inside, and what the man had told me. Sasha would want to know that part, even though I hadn’t been able to speak to Roy himself. I was partway through a sentence when someone knocked on my window, scaring the hell out of me.

I blinked at the man on the other side of the glass: it was Roy. My instincts told me to drive away without speaking to him, but I had to know what he wanted. I wasn’t going to open the door, but I rolled the window down a little so I could hear him.

‘Hi. Paige, is it?’

I nodded, wondering again why I’d been stupid enough to use my real name.

‘I wanted to apologise for the rudeness of one of my employees just now. He doesn’t really understand boundaries, at times.’ He flashed me a bright white smile that had definitely had some cosmetic enhancement. ‘Would you like to come into my office and we can chat about Lukas?’

His eyes dropped to the notebook sitting open on my lap, and I hurriedly pushed it onto the passenger seat, but not before he’d had time to see that his name was written across the top of the page. I saw a shadow cross his face as he realised what he’d read and I had to swallow a lump in my throat.

Struggling to find my voice, I said, ‘I’m sorry, I have an appointment I need to get to.’

He raised his eyebrows, obviously unused to people saying no to him. ‘You came into my place of business on false pretences. I think it’s only polite if you give you me five minutes of your time to explain.’

Swallowing the hard lump that had appeared in my throat, I thought about my options. I really didn’t want to go back inside that gym; if Roy Chapman wanted to harm me, he would have no problem doing so. But if I refused, what would he do to me? I didn’t want to risk putting anyone else I cared about in danger, so I reluctantly agreed.

I got out of the car and followed him back through the gym, keeping my head high but avoiding meeting the gaze of any of the patrons. Roy led me through the door at the back of the room and into what I assumed was his office.

‘Please, take a seat,’ he said, indicating a low chair to the side of his desk. If I sat on it, it would put me at a lower level than him, and I saw the power play straight away.

‘I’ll stand, thanks,’ I replied. If he was bothered by my defiance he didn’t show it, but sat down at his desk and leant back casually, stretching his legs in front of him.

‘What can I do for you?’ he asked. He was well spoken, but his words had a hard edge to them that I knew I shouldn’t ignore.

‘Tell me about your connection to Lukas.’

He raised his eyebrows in amusement at my command, but chose to humour me.

‘Last year, Nadia’s father became ill. Lukas wanted to send money back to Poland to help with his medical care, but the bills were far more than he could keep up with. He tried to get a loan from the bank but his credit rating was too poor. I offered to help him out.’ Chapman spread his hands to suggest he’d done it out of the goodness of his own heart.

‘How much does he owe you?’

He laughed, a sharp bark that made me want to get out of there as soon as possible.

‘He sent you to talk to me and you don’t even know that?’

‘How much?’ I repeated. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of explaining who I was or what I wanted to achieve.

‘Fifteen.’

‘Thousand?’

Chapman rolled his eyes at me. ‘I’m a generous man, but I’m hardly going to be lending a friend fifteen million.’

I felt my face flush but tried to hide my embarrassment at my own question. ‘How much had he repaid?’

‘A little over three thousand.’

I nodded, thinking. There wasn’t much more information I could get out of Chapman, I knew; I could hardly ask him where he was at the time Nadia was murdered. He sensed my hesitation and gave me a wolfish grin, his teeth perfectly straight and gleaming.

‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’

I shook my head, so he stood and took me by the elbow. I tried to pull my arm out of his grip but it was like a vice. He steered me back through the door, across the gym and to my car, then watched as I got in.

‘Please, let Lukas know that if there’s anything I can do to help him out, I’ll do it. Yeah, he owes me a bit of money but that can wait. It’s awful, what happened to Nadia.’ He shook his head sadly.

‘I will, thank you.’ I tried not to choke on the words, forcing myself to be polite to him out of a sense of self-preservation.

‘If you want to talk more, you’re always welcome here,’ Roy replied, glancing at the yellow notebook I’d left on the passenger seat before taking a step back and walking away. Without wasting any time, I put my car into gear and drove away. Glancing in my rear-view mirror, I saw him