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

phone back into my bag. He could wait. At least until I’d got my head round this situation myself, then maybe I’d feel up to getting in touch with him.

I shook myself and stood up. Wallowing wasn’t going to do me any good, so I needed something to take my mind off Max. I didn’t know if Anna would be home yet, and I didn’t want to go home and sit in an empty flat until I went out that evening, so I walked back towards home, got in my car and drove into Scunthorpe. Before I realised which direction I was heading in, I found myself approaching the end of Lukas and Nadia’s street. The case was the perfect distraction right now, and my subconscious had taken me back to where it started.

There was a space right outside the blackened shell of a house, so I pulled up there and got out. Before I had a chance to decide what I was going to do next, the front door of the house opposite opened.

‘You don’t want to park there.’ An elderly man stood in the doorway, glaring at me and my car.

‘Is this someone’s space?’ I asked, doing my best to sound innocent.

The old man snorted. ‘Nobody got their own space round here. I were just trying to help you. That house is trouble.’

‘This one?’ I replied, pointing at Lukas’s house behind me.

He nodded. ‘Leave it there if you want, but don’t expect it to be in one piece when you come back.’

He turned and was about to go back into his house.

‘Wait!’ I called, and jogged across the road so I could speak to him more easily. He looked me up and down suspiciously, but clearly decided I wasn’t going to mug him or anything like that.

‘What do you want?’

I pointed at the house again. ‘Did you see what happened, the night of the fire?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I’m friends with the couple who lived there,’ I told him, stretching the truth as far as I dared. ‘I’m worried the police aren’t going to find out what really happened.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Paige.’

He paused for a moment. ‘I’m Eric. I don’t go out much any more, and I spend most of my days sitting in my front window watching the world go by. So happen as I did see some things on that night, yes.’

I tried to hide my excitement, wondering how I could get this man to talk to me, but a moment later he was already ushering me inside his house. The hallway was dark, with woodchip wallpaper that was browning at the edges, and a dark red carpet that had worn through in patches. The decor in the front room was similar, and a slight smell of rising damp added to the effect. There was a large recliner chair next to the window, which was clearly Eric’s seat, so I perched gingerly on an elderly sofa that sagged in the middle.

‘Cup of tea.’ It was a statement rather than a question, and I waited while he clattered around in the kitchen. I had offered my help before he left the room, but he just glared at me and didn’t reply, so I’d taken that as a refusal.

While he was making tea, I got up and stood behind his chair, looking out over the street. The angle of the window meant you could see people approaching on the opposite side of the road from several houses down in both directions, and if you stood right in the bay you could see the front doors of Eric’s neighbours’ houses too. I wondered whether there was much that went on at this end of the street that Eric didn’t know about, even if he rarely went out.

‘Here you go.’ He appeared in the doorway behind me with a tray in his hands, which I took off him and carefully placed on the low table at the side of the room. He seemed to have no objection to me pouring the tea even though I hadn’t been allowed to help make it, and he settled himself in the recliner while I busied myself with the milk and sugar.

Once we both had a drink and were seated, he nodded out of the window.

‘You see what I mean, love. I don’t miss much. And I know you’ve been back a couple of times in the last week. Saw you talking to her ladyship the other day.’ He pointed over at Jill Adams’s house, and I felt my face flush. I should have realised that in an area like this someone would have been bound to notice me poking my nose in and asking questions. Perhaps I shouldn’t have come into a stranger’s house when nobody knew where I was, but Eric must have been in his eighties and didn’t look like he meant me any harm.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I just want to find out what happened. I don’t think the police really care.’

He sighed. ‘They often don’t care about folks who live round here. I’ve reported all sorts, but you never see anyone actually coming out to investigate. They say they’ll send someone round when they can, but it never happens. Or they say it’s an issue for the council, not the police. Riotous parties, bottles being smashed in the street, people screaming at each other, but no no, nothing to do with the police.’ He shook his head. ‘I remember the days when you’d always see a copper on the streets, and there was never any of this trouble like we get nowadays.’

‘Who is it that has the parties?’ I asked, wondering if there was another reason the neighbours might have disliked Nadia and Lukas, but Eric pointed over his shoulder at the house next door to his.

‘Don’t know how I’m supposed to sleep with that happening. Music that shakes the walls, people running up and down stairs. Happens regular like, at the weekends.’

‘Do you have any family who could