Page 33 of Capture
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There was nothing I liked more than watching the little liar getting fucked, but I had to brush those tantalizing thoughts aside to focus on business.
“A Mr. Dalgety is here to see you,” Betty informed me on the phone, and I told her to send him up.
“Dalgety?” Ronan screwed his face up. “Doesn’t sound familiar. Is he a cop?”
I shrugged, noticing a pale piece of fabric poking out from his pant pocket. “No idea. You’re coming out.”
“Huh?” he frowned in his confusion, following my finger pointing at the front of his pants.
“Your pocket,” I clarified, since he was looking in the wrong place.
“Oh,” he seemed bashful. “Annika’s washing. I dumped her dirty clothes on my desk, but found a pair of her panties on the floor that I must’ve dropped on the way up here. I’ll put them through the laundry at home.”
I wiggled my finger at him, and he pulled the pair out and threw them onto the desk. “Full brief soft pink,” I said, holding them up.
“I think that’s more like bikini briefs, but you know…she doesn’t seem to like G-strings,” he educated me. “Or at least I haven’t seen her wear them, and there’s none in her laundry. It’s either bikini bottom or naked.”
“Naked?” That caught my attention.
“Naked swimming. Skinny dipping. That’s how I first saw her, naked, swimming. So, it’s kinda hard to turn my brain into hating her, because I had seen her at her finest, before I knew who she was,” he seemed to be making an argument to save her. “She was exquisite.”
Betty knocked at the door, and I yelled, “Enter,” and a plump man with a receding hairline who on first glance looked like a cop, but I could be wrong.
“Mr. Dalgety?” I pushed my chair back and offered him my hand as Ronan grabbed a chair and sat to the side of us.
He shook my hand, then sat in the chair, and then looked behind him to ensure the door was closed and Betty had gone. “I must apologize, Mr. Kaiser, I deliberately used a pseudonym. My name is not Dalgety, it’s George Tindale, Sergeant George Tindale from Gothenburg PD.”
My heart sank, and I wondered if he was collaborating with Betty, and my hand that was resting on the desk formed into a fist out of fury. Yet it was Freddie who approached me, urgingthat I have a meeting with the guy, so I was starting to think that I couldn’t trust Freddie either.
I glanced at Ronan because the name Tindale didn’t ring a bell, and reading the expression on Ronan’s face, he hadn’t heard of him either.
“Sergeant, how can I help you?” I asked, playing dumb, suppressing the anger and punishment I was planning to inflict on Freddie. It seemed as if the entire fucking place was rife with enemies trying to take us down.
“We are currently investigating these two people,” he stated, swiping his phone and bringing up two photos.
I glanced at Ronan, who leaned over the desk to take a look, yet we kept our expressions blank. We knew who they were, alright, but I had no intention of letting the sergeant know that.
“Do you recognize them?” he asked.
“What is this about, Sergeant?” I avoided answering his question in case he incriminated me for a crime I didn’t commit again.
“Let me explain,” he said flatly, even though the guy likely had enough experience as a cop to spot a liar or at least someone trying to evade telling the truth. The guy probably had his mind made up about me before he walked in here. “Understandably, there are some pieces of information I am not privy to share, but I was alerted by their behavior when a student by the name of Riley Laws, correct name Annika.”
He shot me a side glance, but I remained quiet, waiting for him to finish.
He continued, “Obviously, you would know Annika, since she was fostered by your uncle several years ago.”
“Ah,thatAnnika,” I still played dumb, unsure of where I should go in this conversation, so I glanced again at Ronan, whose complexion was draining of color.
“Her pseudonym was Riley Laws, and she was under the witness protection program after she testified to…” he stalled as if he wasn’t keen to finish the sentence off.
“Put me in prison. Yes, I’m very familiar with what happened there, and she lied,” I finished off the sentence for him, clenching my jaw as I spoke because it still pisses me off, even as my feelings toward the little liar had changed. Every time I was reminded of what happened three years ago, it reopened the fresh wound.
Tindale nodded, watching me closely. “I am aware,” he agreed, and I refused to relax, because he might be trying to grease me up so I dropped my guard, and then he’d pin some fake shit on me and I’d be back in prison again. Fuck that.
“You’re aware that she lied under oath?” Ronan spoke for the first time. “You’re not part of the Larsson police force, so how do you know?”
