Don't Get Caught

Chapter 16 - Ariel

My latest visit to the prison shook me up more than I cared to admit. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see the cold stare Danny had left me with. The look that told me he didn't feel any guilt. However much he hated his sister's boyfriend, a normal person would feel some remorse. That left me with only two options. He didn't do it or he was a psychopath. My mind was like a pendulum swinging between the two options not knowing where to settle so instead just continuously moving.

I still refused to talk to Leah and Hasmita. They would tell me to stay away, and they would be right. I brushed off their requests for my presence saying I was busy with work. It wasn't a complete lie.

Instead, at work, I dug out more of my old research trying to find similar cases where the abuser had been killed. Every single one of these morbid cases, bar none, it had been the abused victim who did it - either in retaliation or self-defence. And those cases were, of course, rare. If anyone ended up dead it was usually the victim, not the abuser. This didn't mean it was impossible – what was it Alessandro had said about statistics?

I had a set of databases I'd obtained from each police station which had a list of reports of domestic violence, so I meticulously went through those, searching for the policeman in question, Bernard Travers. But he had never been reported. And if Danny's sister had never reported him, I would not have her name. And as Bernard was just her boyfriend, not her husband, there was no official record of her in relation to him.

Buried deep in my research, the door to my office bursting open scared the crap out of me. I physically jumped out of my seat, sending my coffee cup flying, and watching as the brown liquid spread faster than my reflexes across the file I had open. Shit. I slammed it shut on the mess.

"Trinny, babe, I wasn't expecting you today," I said in a higher-than-usual pitch, glancing around my desk for anything I might have on show that I shouldn't.

Despite my co-worker being the other side of my screen, I sat back down and locked it anyway so that a photo of Hasmita, Leah and me - our smiling faces with the Eiffel Tower in the background - replaced the incriminating spreadsheets.

"Oliver called me; asked me to come in. You're very jumpy today." Trinny sashayed around our cluttered office and lowered herself onto the large ball she used as a chair in front of her desk. I watched as she pushed off her Converse trainers with the toes of each foot and slipped into one of several pairs of high heels she kept under her desk.

"I'm fine. Just a bit wired - too much coffee." I set my now empty coffee cup back in an upright position. I squeezed the bridge of my nose for emphasis.

"Here." Trinny threw me a pack of tissues from her handbag.

I caught them, pulled a few out, and started dabbing at my desk, brown liquid soon to be forever ingrained in the wood, while she quizzed me over what was keeping me so busy.

"Let's not talk work," I said with a sigh, not having the brainpower to come up with a sensible lie.

"Ok," she said with a mischievous smile. "I hear you're seeing a lawyer. Tell me about him."

I waved my hand dismissively. "Tall, dark, handsome. Rich. A bit of an arse. The usual." How did one shag count as 'seeing'? And how did Trinny have this amazing knack of knowing my business all the time? I suppose that was why she was in this profession. And that was why I had to be careful I gave nothing away.

Trinny's girly giggle filled the room, cutting into my thoughts. "You're always so down on the guys you date. Why don't you ever just find a decent one?"

I tentatively unlocked my screen now I could be sure Trinny was settled at her desk. "It keeps me on my toes." Understatement of the year.

"And a lawyer will definitely do that! You do like to stretch the rules a little when it comes to your job - best not let him find out some of your methods." She blew me a kiss across the room.