The Silent Suspect Nell Pattison (best classic books of all time TXT) 📖

a lot of questions asked. Maybe I should have told Sasha what I was planning to do, but I knew she’d tell me I was being ridiculous, though before Lukas was released she would have probably encouraged me to do it.

I was mulling over this when Mariusz left the kebab shop, and I was left with a split-second decision about what to do. As I was already there, I realised it was stupid to give up now and I might as well carry on, but if things looked like they were going to get risky I wouldn’t hesitate to duck out and go home. My desire to find out what was going on only stretched so far.

A little way down the road, Mariusz turned off and I followed him. The streets became quieter as we moved back into a residential area from the main road, so I kept my distance again to avoid him noticing me. He stopped outside a house, its windows dark, so I stopped too. I didn’t get any closer to him, but crossed the road to give me a better view of the house.

Mariusz walked up and down the pavement outside the house a couple of times, then turned round to see if anyone was watching him. There was a van parked on the pavement near where I was standing, so I ducked behind it. When I peered out again a couple of seconds later, Mariusz had vaulted over the gate and was slipping down the side of the house.

I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but a silent house wasn’t it. Were his friends round the back? There was no evidence from the front of the house that anyone was in, and the curtains were open, so light from a back room would have been visible from the road. No, the house looked completely empty. My heart sank. Was Mariusz breaking in? If so, where did that leave me? Should I call the police and report it, then have to explain what I was doing here in the first place, or should I pretend I’d never been here?

Ducking behind the van again, I thought about my options. If he was committing a crime, I knew I needed to call the police, but I didn’t want to give them my name. The obvious answer was to do it anonymously, but I didn’t know where I’d find a phone that couldn’t be easily traced back to me. Public payphones weren’t exactly common in Scunthorpe, and I wasn’t sure how to call 999 and block my number.

I was debating with myself over what to do when I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye. Mariusz was on the move again. I hadn’t noticed him come from round the back of the house, because I’d been expecting him to be there for longer. He didn’t have a bag with him, and there was no noticeable bulge in his pockets, so it didn’t look like he’d stolen something. Had he met someone there? Was it something to do with drugs? I left my hiding place behind the van and followed him in the direction of the main road again.

As I walked, I realised we weren’t far from Lukas’s house. The two fires and now this – whatever it was – were all within walking distance of one another, and I wondered if it was a territory thing. I didn’t claim to be an expert on drug gangs, but from what I knew they tended to only work in certain areas to avoid stepping on each other’s toes. Part of me wanted to believe I was being ridiculous, that Mariusz had just been hanging out with a group of friends and had nothing to do with drugs, but what other explanation was there for the strange interactions yesterday between the lads outside, the man inside, and the people visiting the house? The lad who’d ridden off on the bike had been carrying a package given to him by the man inside, so the most obvious answer was that he was acting as a courier.

Five minutes later, Mariusz had stopped outside another house. This one wasn’t dark – the curtains were closed, but a glow from an upstairs window showed a light was on in one of the bedrooms. It was a terrace, with a small passageway leading round the back, which was shared with the neighbouring house. Mariusz looked like he was about to head round there when the gate belonging to the next house opened and a man came out, shortly followed by a Staffordshire bull terrier on a chain.

I jumped out of the way as Mariusz ran straight past me, but he paid me no attention as he pelted away from the house. By the time I’d caught up with what was happening, he was at the end of the street and I only just glimpsed which way he turned. I set off after him, walking quickly because I was afraid running would attract attention, but by the time I reached the end of the road there was no sign of him.

‘Shit,’ I muttered to myself as I turned into the next street. There was a scattering of alleyways Mariusz could have ducked into, as well as a couple of other roads that met this one. I walked to the next crossroads and looked up and down in both directions, wondering where he could have gone.

As I looked, I realised that the road to my left was where I’d seen Mariusz the previous day. I had well and truly lost him now, so I thought my best bet was to go in that direction, in case he was meeting someone at the same house. I wanted to see with my own eyes what they were up to, so I had something concrete to prove my theory, and then tell Singh about. The street was empty and eerily quiet. A dog barking made me jump and I