Barker nodded, he folded his arms, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he opened his mouth to say something but was cut off by the front door slamming shut. Carla jumped. The woman detective, Detective Constable Chalmers, scuttled into the room, ducking her head apologetically. “Mr. Myerson’s on his way. He said he won’t be long.”
“He lives five minutes away,” Carla said. “Noel Road. Do you know it? Joe Orton lived there in the sixties. The playwright? It’s where he was killed, bludgeoned to death, I think, or was it stabbed?” The detectives looked at her blankly. “It’s not . . . relevant,” Carla said; she thought for a horrible moment she might laugh. Why had she said that, anyway? Why was she talking about Joe Orton, about people being bludgeoned? She was going mad. Barker and Chalmers seemed not to notice, or not to mind. Perhaps everyone behaved like a lunatic when they received news of a family member murdered.
“When did you last see your nephew, Mrs. Myerson?” Barker asked her.
Carla’s mind was completely blank. “I . . . Christ, I saw him . . . at Angela’s house. My sister’s house. It’s not far, about twenty minutes’ walk, over the other side of the canal, on Hayward’s Place. I’ve been sorting out her things, and Daniel came to pick some stuff up. He’d not lived there for ages but there were still some of his things in his old bedroom, sketchbooks, mostly. He was quite a talented artist. He drew comics, you know. Graphic novels.” She gave an involuntary shudder. “So that was, a week ago? Two weeks? Jesus, I can’t remember, my head is just wrecked, I . . .” She scraped her nails over her scalp, pushing her fingers through the short crop of her hair.
“It’s perfectly all right, Mrs. Myerson,” Chalmers said. “We can get the details later.”
“So, how long had he been living there down on the canal?” Barker asked her. “Do you happen to know when—”
The door knocker clacked loudly and Carla jumped, again. “Theo,” she breathed, already on her feet, “thank God.” The woman got to the door before Carla could; she ushered Theo, red-faced, perspiring, into the hall.
“Christ, Cee,” he said, grabbing hold of Carla, pulling her tightly against him. “What in God’s name happened?”
* * *
The police went over it all again: how Carla’s nephew, Daniel Sutherland, had been found dead on a houseboat moored near De Beauvoir Road on Regent’s Canal that morning. How he’d been stabbed, multiple times. How he’d likely been killed between twenty-four and thirty-six hours before he’d been found, how they’d be able to narrow that down in due course. They asked questions about Daniel’s work and friends and did they know of any money troubles and did he take drugs?
They didn’t know. “You weren’t close?” Chalmers offered.
“I hardly knew him,” Theo said. He was sitting at Carla’s side, rubbing the top of his head with his forefinger, the way he did when he was anxious about something.
“Mrs. Myerson?”
“Not close, no. Not . . . well. My sister and I didn’t see each other very often, you see.”
“Despite the fact she lived just over the canal?” Chalmers piped up.
“No.” Carla shook her head. “We . . . I hadn’t spent time with Daniel for a very long time,” Carla said, “not really. Not since he was a boy. When my sister died I saw him again, as I said. He’d been living abroad for a while, Spain, I think.”
“When did he move to the boat?” Barker asked.
Carla pressed her lips together, shaking her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I honestly don’t.”
“We had no idea he was living there,” Theo said.
Barker gave him a sharp look. “He must be fairly close to your home, though. Noel Road, wasn’t it? That’s what? About a mile from where the boat was?”
Theo shrugged. “That may well be,” he said, and he rubbed his forehead harder, the skin turning quite pink up near his hairline. He looked as though he’d been in the sun. “That may well be. But I’d no idea he was there.”
The detectives exchanged a look. “Mrs. Myerson?” Barker looked at her.
Carla shook her head. “No idea,” she said quietly.
The detectives fell silent then, for quite a long time. They were waiting for Carla to say something, she imagined, for her or Theo to speak. Theo obliged. “You said . . . twenty-four hours, is that right? Twenty-four to thirty-six hours?”