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,
