“That van says ‘Coroner’ on the front,” Dylan said. “That means someone’s died.”
He turned away from the window and stared at Cassie.
“Isn’t that right?” he asked. “The coroner takes a dead body away, right?”
While Cassie was still fumbling for a coherent response, Madison put two and two together.
“Dad’s died. Oh, Dylan, Dad’s died, hasn’t he?”
With a scream of grief, she launched herself into Cassie’s arms, wailing at the top of her voice.
In tears herself, Cassie hugged the young girl. She was sobbing so hard, she was incapable of saying anything that could console Madison, or even speaking at all. All she could do was hold Madison tight as she cried out her grief, her body convulsing as she wept.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
It seemed like hours later that Cassie heard footsteps approach the bedroom door.
She had no idea what had taken the police so long. Madison had cried herself to sleep in her arms, and Cassie had nestled against a pillow and done her best to soothe the young girl.
Cassie didn’t know if Dylan was still processing the shock, or in denial. He was reading, but she didn’t know how much he’d taken in, because he was only turning the pages occasionally.
As she struggled into a sitting position, Madison woke and began to sob again.
She heard Trish’s voice outside and it sounded hoarse, as if she’d been crying.
“I don’t want them alone with her. Please,” Trish said.
Cassie felt a stab of shock. Was Trish referring to her?
The door opened and Trish rushed inside, with a plainclothes policeman following.
“My darlings, Mum’s here.”
She looked swollen-eyed and her face was sheet white.
“I’m going to keep you company now. It’ll be OK, my precious ones, I promise.”
Cassie realized that she’d never before heard Trish call her kids “darling” or “precious.” As her dazed mind was taking this in, she realized the tall, balding policeman was speaking to her.
“Ma’am? Ms. Vale? Please come with us. We need you to talk us through what you saw.”
Cassie struggled to her feet. Her legs had been crushed by Madison’s weight and now painful pins and needles were coursing through them.
She hadn’t thought that the police would want to question her, but of course they would need to take a statement since she had discovered Ryan’s body. She hoped it wouldn’t take too long.
As she walked to the door, she noticed that Trish cringed away from her, wrapping a protective arm around Madison, and she was puzzled to see fear in her eyes.
Outside, the balding officer introduced himself.
“I’m Detective Bruton, and this is Detective Parker.”
Parker looked younger than Bruton, and more aggressive. He was short and muscular, with close-cropped blond hair, and looked as if he spent hours doing weights at the gym. The way he looked at Cassie made her more nervous. In fact, she corrected that impression. The demeanor of both detectives was making her increasingly uneasy.
“Take a seat here, ma’am.”
The police had commandeered the kitchen table. It was covered in papers and official documents, and a camera bag stood on its corner.
Cassie sat with her back to the wall and waited while the detectives cleared some space.
“Your name, please?”
“Cassandra Vale.”
“Permanent address?”
Cassie realized she didn’t have one. She’d given up her rental apartment when she left the States. She found herself stammering out the home address where she and Jacqui had lived while her mother had been alive. Her father had moved many times since then. Nobody at that house would know her now.
She hoped the police wouldn’t ask for her passport with the incriminating lack of a working visa. Even though they were here for a death, these police looked ready to tackle any infringement of the law, however minor.
“What are you doing here?”
She swallowed.
“I knew Ryan Ellis slightly. He invited me to stay for a couple of weeks.”
He was dead; he couldn’t contradict her story. Even so, Bruton’s eyebrows rose as he wrote her explanation down.
“You’re not working?”
Parker’s gaze was drilling into her and in spite of the cold, Cassie felt her armpits start to sweat.
“I was helping out.”
“Mr. Ellis’s widow seemed to think you were hired as an au pair.”
“I was helping out,” Cassie repeated, doggedly sticking to her story.
“We’ll have a look at your passport in a minute.”
Bruton and Parker exchanged glances and Cassie felt sick.
“What day did you arrive?” Bruton continued with the questioning.
When had it been? Cassie groped back into the past, trying to remember when she’d gotten here, filled with hope that she was making a move to something better. Her memory was in pieces and it took her a while to recall the day.
“On a Saturday. Last Saturday.”
“How did you get here?”
“I have a car. It’s in for repair at the moment. I can find the license plate details.”
“We will take those later. Now, tell me about what happened yesterday evening.”
“Ryan and Trish came back late. They’d been away the previous night. I think they’d both been drinking. Trish went straight to bed. I updated Ryan that the kids were OK. We had a glass of wine out on the balcony. Then I went to bed, too.”
She closed her eyes, not wanting to think about what had actually happened, and the way he’d turned on her. The moment she’d realized that hidden under his easy charm was a vicious manipulator who would stop at nothing to achieve his ends.
“I woke up at three a.m. and went to the bathroom.”
She wasn’t going to mention her sleepwalking either, in case it complicated things.
“I noticed the porch light was still on, so I went to check. I saw Ryan was still outside and when I went up to him I saw immediately that he was dead.”
She swallowed back a sob.
“I called Trish, and she told me to go and stay with the children.”
They were looking at her expectantly as if waiting for her to say more. But what more was there to say?
The silence felt uneasy.
It was Parker who spoke next. He leaned forward, placing his corded arms on the table.
“What was your relationship with the victim?”
Cassie stared at him, confused.
“Why is Ryan a victim?” she asked.
She saw Bruton glance quickly at Parker as if her question had surprised him.
Parker looked angry, scowling at her momentarily. Cassie thought he probably got angry easily and even though he had used the wrong word, he wanted to blame her for pointing it out.
But instead, he repeated it, slowly and clearly.
“Your relationship with the victim.”
“Friends,” Cassie said hesitantly. She worried they would know it was a lie. Trish might already have told them that Cassie was a stranger who had never met the family before.
Parker stared at her and the silence grew uncomfortable.
“Are you sure about that?”
Cassie nodded. She felt anxious about where this was all heading. Ryan’s untimely death had blown all her secrets into the open. Now she was caught up in the investigation and if this line of questioning continued, Trish would find out what she and Ryan had done.
“Cassandra Vale.” Parker’s voice was hard and uncompromising. His gaze pinned her.
“Your statement today will form part of the official investigation into this death. Perjury is a crime, as is defeating the ends of justice.”
He reached into one of the brown envelopes on the table and brought out an evidence bag.
Cassie caught her breath in horror as she saw it contained the firs
t pregnancy test she’d taken; the one that she’d messed up by dropping into the toilet bowl.
“We discovered this while searching the house, and Mrs. Ellis has confirmed it is not hers.”
How had they discovered it? Cassie was sure she’d thrown it away carefully. Had Dylan put it somewhere? Had Trish suspected something and gone searching for it? At any rate, here it was, out in the open—together with her secrets.
With a twist of her stomach, she remembered that the children knew. Madison had seen Cassie kissing Ryan and knew she hadn’t slept in her own room. Dylan had seen her on the way to Ryan’s bedroom, wrapped in his robe. She wouldn’t have a chance if she continued to deny.
“We slept together a couple of times,” she whispered, as her eyes filled with tears.
She felt like a whore, confessing this in the family’s home, with Ryan’s bereaved wife and children waiting down the hall.
“Please understand, I had no idea he was married. He told me he was divorced. I only found out the truth when his wife came back from a business trip overseas.”
The detectives exchanged another glance.
Cassie was starting to realize there was more to this. The way that Parker had called Ryan “the victim”—even the way that Trish had looked at her so fearfully earlier, and how she’d demanded that Cassie should not be left alone with the children.
Bruton nodded at Parker, who stood up.
“Give us your passport, please.”
Cassie walked with the policeman to her bedroom and took it out of her purse.
He took the passport and they all went back to the kitchen.
Cassie dreaded that they were going to seize the passport. She’d been questioned by the police at her last job, after the suspicious death at the chateau, and they had ended up taking her passport away. She remembered the trauma of feeling trapped, unable to get away, a prisoner in the house.
Cassie feared this was going to happen again.
In fact, what they did next was even worse.
The policeman took out a tape recorder and spoke briefly into it, giving the date and quoting a reference number and some other information that she couldn’t make out.
Then Parker turned to her.
“Cassandra Vale, we are arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Ryan Ellis. You do not have to say anything at this time, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention, when questioned, something on which you later rely in court.”
He continued to read Cassie her rights, but she couldn’t hear him.
All she could hear was the panicked thoughts inside her own head.
They thought Ryan had been murdered, and suspected she had done it.
Given that she’d admitted she’d had an affair with him, and that he’d lied to her, Cassie realized she’d unwittingly given the police exactly what they wanted—a cast-iron motive for his murder.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Cassie stared at the two officers in terror. Bruton looked stolidly professional but Parker seemed pleased, as if he was inwardly satisfied that this was happening.
“No!” she said loudly. When they didn’t respond she tried again.
“No!” She screamed the word. “You can’t do this. You have no right to arrest me. I’m innocent. You’re framing me, this is a conspiracy. I refuse to allow this to happen. Get me a lawyer. Now!”
Parker grabbed her arms and forced them behind her back. She struggled with him, feeling as if she was fighting for her life, not just her freedom. This was a nightmare she had to escape from. It couldn’t be happening, it wasn’t real.
“This way, please, ma’am.”
Shrieking at the top of her voice, straining against the tight embrace of the handcuffs, Cassie found herself half-carried, half-marched to the waiting police car.
It was only when they turned her around to force her into the car, in a practiced and efficient way, that she saw Trish and the children were standing at the front door, watching her go.
Cassie was appalled that this would be the children’s last sight of her, the last impression they would have. Her hands restrained, being manhandled into the vehicle like a criminal. For a crime she didn’t commit.
“I’m innocent,” she called to them, sobbing out the words. “I’m being framed. Please help me!”
She hoped they might run to the car and intervene, but they simply stood, watching, and she realized that Trish must believe completely in her guilt
Cassie had never felt so helpless and alone.
*
The drive to the local precinct took only a few minutes but to Cassie, it felt like eternity. She was crushed by fear. These were no trumped-up charges; this was the British police system that operated like a well-oiled machine. If they had arrested her, it was because they knew they had a watertight case. She regretted struggling when they’d taken her away. Overcome by panic, she’d fought them instinctively, but it could only have cemented her guilt in their eyes.
When they arrived, the police helped her out of the car and escorted her into the police station. There, finally, they removed her handcuffs and released her aching arms.
She could not stop crying. She sobbed as the station’s constable, a dark-haired woman who didn’t look much older than Cassie, photographed her and took her fingerprints. She cried while they read her rights to her again, still unable to take in what they meant.
She was being framed. That was all she could cling to. Trish had found out she was sleeping with Ryan and had accused her of somehow causing his death.
The fact that this was even being allowed was terrifying. Cassie wondered whether there was corruption at work. In this close-knit community, Trish might have a connection within the police department. If that was the case, who knew how far her influence reached, and would Cassie be able to get beyond it to plead her case?
“In here, please, love.”
The kind constable had stopped calling her “ma’am” after the third pack of Kleenex had been opened. Now she seemed to have adopted a motherly concern for Cassie, but the fact she cared only made Cassie cry all the harder as she was shepherded into the tiny prison cell.
The door clanged behind her and she was alone, locked into this cramped, chilly space that stank of chemical cleaner, with a sour undertone of old vomit.
She hadn’t taken her meds last night—she’d been too distraught to think about it after escaping from Ryan’s threats. That was probably why she’d had the nightmare and sleepwalked. Now here she was, locked in a police cell without them, for who knew how long. Would she be able to cope?
Cassie doubted it. Her mind felt as if it was on overload, with red alarm buzzers sounding on all sides. Her ability for logical thought had shut down completely. The hysterical crying had made her nauseous, and in fact, she spent some time dry retching over the metal toilet pan that was wedged in the tiny space behind the Spartan bed.
Then she collapsed on her knees next to the bed and buried her face in the coarse blue blanket.
She lay there, her sobs gradually lessening, until she slipped off the bed onto the hard linoleum floor.
*
Constable Aria Chandra peered worriedly through the bars.
The pretty redhead had suffered a bout of hysterics so severe that the constable had been on the point of calling the precinct’s doctor, as she’d thought a tranquilizer should be administered.
Now she’d finally calmed down, but she was on the floor. The girl should at least be on the bed.
Reading through the charge sheet, Chandra learned she’d been arrested at home. She had appeared sober and not under the influence of any drugs, although she’d grown hysterical upon being arrested and had attempted to resist the officers.
Chandra sighed. This girl looked pretty, and fragile, and harmless; and it wouldn’t do her any good to be lying on the floor. When the detectives came back later in the morning, she’d be taken for questioning. She needed some rest.
“Watch me, will yo
u?” she asked her shift partner, a junior sergeant.
She made some warm, sweet tea in a paper cup and headed into the cell, with the sergeant standing by outside the locked door.
Chandra put the cup down on the shelf.
“Come on, love. Get up. You’ll have a better rest on the bed. That floor’s too cold for you to be spending time there.”
She helped the girl up, thinking she was in a right state and wondering if she should give the doctor a call after all. She was shivering and shaking and she started crying again.
“It’s a setup,” she kept repeating.
“Love, you need to get some rest. Here’s your tea.”
She placed the cup in the girl’s hand, noticing she felt icy cold, and held it steady while she drank. She’d been crying so much she needed fluids. When Chandra was sure she was able to hold it on her own, she let go.
Once the tea was finished, she helped her onto the bed and pulled the blanket over her. Then she left, hoping that she would calm down and be able to get some sleep.
An hour later, she returned to check up on Cassie, bringing her another cup of tea. She was still in two minds about whether to call the police doctor, because although the girl had finally stopped crying, she was shaking violently.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, as some of the tea splashed onto the floor.
“It’s all right. Try to be calm. Remember, nobody’s out to get you. They just have to follow the processes.”
Returning to the front desk, Chandra saw that Parker had returned to work.
There was no need to ask him if he’d had any sleep, because he’d obviously spent the interim at the gym. His hair was still wet from the shower and he was carrying his gym bag over his shoulder.
“Good workout?” she asked.
“The best. Keeps me sane.” He grinned at her.
“Are you going to question the girl now? Don’t be hard on her. She’s very nervous.”
Parker frowned.
“Chandra, she doesn’t deserve special treatment. She’s a murderer. We’re going to put on the table now what she’s done, and I’ll be very surprised if she doesn’t cave in immediately and give us a full confession.”
Almost Lost Page 21
