‘Lung cancer,’ I tell Sam.‘Stage four.’
She slaps the file back onto my desk. ‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer arsehole.’
‘Hmm.’ I pull the folder in front of me and open it again. Cigarette fumes waft off the paper.
‘When do you have your first session with him?’ Sam perches on the edge of my desk, rolling a cigarette between her fingers. At my raised eyebrow, she pockets it.
‘Tomorrow.’ I’m looking at the words in front of me, but not really seeing them. The letters merge into monochrome blobs.
No matter how many times I read them, I just can’t make sense of them. I’ve seen and heard some awful things throughout my career, but the murder of a pregnant woman and her unborn baby still horrifies me.
And tomorrow morning, I’ll be sitting in a locked, soundproofed room with the man who did it. Cassie Walker was murdered fifteen years ago, but I still remember the shock I felt when I heard about her death. Just twenty-seven years old and heavily pregnant, Cassie didn’t come home from work one evening. Her colleagues had seen her leave the restaurant soon after ten, presumably on her way to catch the bus home like she always did. For four long weeks, this pretty young girl with blue eyes, chestnut hair and a swollen belly was on the front page of every newspaper,plastered on news sites and discussed on talk shows across the country.
And then, Tomas Kovak confessed to murdering her. The forty-five-year-old son of Slovakian immigrants had walked into his local police station and turned himself in. Completely remorseless. He’d been walking home from the pub that night, he said, and he’d seen Cassie waiting at the bus stop alone. He’d offered to sit with her until the bus came, to keep her safe.
She’d been polite but firm in her refusal. He’d offered again, saying he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart, insisting he was protecting her. Again, she’d said no. That had annoyed him. Couldn’t she see how defenceless she was? An attractive young woman waiting all alone in the dark? She warned him if he didn’t leave her alone, she’d call the cops. That had been it; Kovak had snapped. Who was she to deny him? And not only deny his offer of help, but threaten him. As Cassie turned away to find her phone, he’d hit her once on the back of the head.
She’d collapsed, and he’d dragged her limp body behind the bus shelter. He’d waited until she’d regained consciousness before he strangled her, he said…
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