Chapter Thirty-Nine
Hearing the door to the apartment slam shut, Cassie swung round from the full-length window where she’d been watching Emily jogging.
She’d been out there for ages, pounding along in the squelchy rain-sodden grass, pushing herself at a punishing pace, doubtless trying to exorcise last night from her mind.
Cassie had offered to keep her company, but Emily had said that she needed to be on her own.
Not that Cassie had really wanted to go for a run with her daughter, she’d wanted to take advantage of Finlay not having his mother around for a few minutes so she could discreetly interrogate him.
She’d promised Venetia that she’d try and talk to the boy in the hope of throwing light on what had happened last night and so the minute Rosalyn had gone to see Venetia, and at Cassie’s suggestion, she’d done just that.
But what she’d managed to get out of the boy had shocked her and she didn’t know what to do with the knowledge she now had.
‘Your friend and neighbour is a crazy psycho!’ blasted Rosalyn, stomping into the room.
‘You can’t surely be talking about Venetia,’ Cassie said.
‘I certainly am. She’s as good as accused Finlay of killing her dog! Can you think of anything more sick or twisted?’
In view of what she now knew, Cassie said nothing. But then Rosalyn suddenly looked around her.
‘Where’s Finlay?’ she demanded. ‘You said you wouldn’t let him out of your sight while I went downstairs. You promised!’
‘Calm down, he’s—’
‘Don’t you dare tell me to calm down in that irritatingly patronising way! My son is all I have left in the world!’
‘I’ll say it again,’ Cassie said patiently, alarmed at the 0-to-60 speed of Rosalyn’s temper, ‘calm down and listen to me. Finlay is in his bedroom watching Bluey on his iPad.’
Perhaps not trusting Cassie, Rosalyn glared at her and hurtled across the room and to the bedroom at the farthest end of the hallway.
Murmured voices followed and Cassie was left wondering how to break it to Rosalyn what Finlay had just shared with her.
And should she tell Venetia what she’d learnt?
She shuddered at the thought. Wouldn’t it be better that Venetia never knew what really happened so she could hang on to the belief that it was no more than a tragic accident?
Because the truth was repugnant. So shockingly repugnant Cassie now regretted involving herself. Playing at being detective had been a mistake. She’d done it with the right motive, but it had backfired on her badly for she was now embroiled in something that could have appalling repercussions.
To begin with, when she’d gone into Finlay’s room and sat on the bed with him, subtly dropping leading questions into the conversation, he’d barely looked at her while replying, his eyes focused on the screen of his iPad.
She’d wondered if he was making it up, but when she’d probed further, it became all too hideously clear what he was saying.
‘The dog was naughty,’ he’d said. ‘He barked. He barked lots. Then he was naughty, and he bit me.’
That was when Finlay had shown her what appeared to be bite marks on his leg; a small circle of tiny pink indentations. Had his mother seen the marks? If so, why hadn’t she said anything?
‘And then I smacked him,’ Finlay had continued, matter-of-factly. ‘Because it was naughty to bite me.’
‘Then what did you do?’ Cassie had asked with a sense of dread.
‘I picked him up and told him to be good. But he wouldn’t be good. He barked in my ear and tried to bite me again. So I threw him into the water to make him be good. That’s what you do when children are naughty.’
‘What, throw children into the river?’ repeated Cassie, horrified at what he’d said. Surely the boy had to be making things up now.
He’d looked up from the iPad screen at her question and shaken his head. ‘No. A swimming pool. That’s what happened to me when I was naughty. It was to make me be good.’
‘Really? When was that?’
‘At home. Before Daddy died.’
‘And who threw you into the pool?’
He lowered his gaze, returning it to Bluey on his iPad. ‘It’s a secret,’ he mumbled.
‘Why is it a secret?’ she asked, cautiously.
‘Mummy said it was. She said Daddy would be cross if I told anyone. And if I told anyone then something really bad would happen to her.’
‘Are you saying Daddy would be cross with Mummy?’
When he didn’t answer her, Cassie said, ‘Finlay, would Daddy have been cross with Mummy?’
He gave an imperceptible nod, and Cassie could see he was growing bored with the conversation. But she had one more question.
‘So you threw Bon-Bon into the river to make him behave, just like what happened to you? Is that what you did last night?’
He rubbed his nose then slipped an exploratory finger inside a nostril.
Pulling it out and wiping it on the front of his T-shirt, he said, ‘Yes. But he still barked … and then he stopped barking, so that meant he was being good. And I called his name, but he didn’t come out of the water, and I couldn’t see him.
I looked. And then I was scared because I was all on my own and I didn’t know how to get home.
And then I wet myself and I cried. Don’t tell Mummy I did that. ’
Cassie swallowed. ‘What don’t you want me to tell Mummy?’
‘That I wet myself. I’m a big boy now and big boys don’t wet themselves.’
‘I’m sure Mummy wouldn’t be cross with you for having a little accident. All children do.’
He shook his head. ‘Mummy said Daddy wouldn’t like it if I had an accident. He’d be cross.’
With a disturbing image of family life in Dubai now fast developing in her mind, Cassie knew that she had to talk to Rosalyn, to tell her what Finlay had shared with her. But ever since last night the boy’s mother was so volatile. Would it be better to wait until things had settled down?
What was absolutely clear was that Finlay needed to speak to a professional, some kind of therapist who would teach him that you didn’t go around drowning dogs to make them behave! If he could do that at so young an age, what would he do when he was a grown man?
Or was she overreacting? Was she too quick to give credence to what the boy had said because she still hated Drew and wanted to believe he was capable of being an abusive father and husband?
The answer could wait until Ben was home that evening, she decided. With his wholly rational and objective way of looking at things, Ben would know exactly what they should do.