“That’s the only time you’ve seen her?”
Theo considered this a moment. “No, no. I couldn’t swear to it in a court of law, but I believe she is the woman I told you I saw, on the towpath, the morning of Daniel’s death. I said at the time, I told you that I saw her from my bedroom window. That was not true. In fact, I . . . I think I might have passed her. On the way to the boat, I think. She was . . . she was shuffling along, or limping, perhaps. I thought she was drunk. She had dirt or blood on her clothes. I assumed she had stumbled. I mentioned her when you first questioned me, because I was trying to deflect your attention.”
“Deflect our attention away from you?” Barker said.
“Yes, away from me! Obviously away from me.”
The detectives exchanged another of their inscrutable looks. “Would it surprise you,” Barker asked, “to hear that this knife—the knife which you have identified as belonging to you and which, you say, you used to kill Daniel Sutherland, was found in the flat of the young woman in the photograph?”
“I . . .” Surprise didn’t begin to cover it. “In her flat?” A terrible thought passed through Theo’s mind, that he had fallen on his sword unnecessarily. “You found the knife in her flat?” he repeated dumbly. “She . . . well. She must have picked it up. She must have seen me, discarding it. . . . Perhaps she was the person I thought I saw later on, perhaps that was when I saw her—”
“You just said that you thought you saw her on your way to the boat,” Chalmers pointed out.
“But it may have been later. It may have been later. My recollection of that morning is not exactly crystal clear. It was a stressful time. An emotional time. I was . . . I was obviously very upset.”
“Do you recognize this, Mr. Myerson?”
They had something else to show him now, a scarf. He nodded. “Oh, yes, that’s mine. It’s Burberry, that one, a good one.” He looked up at them. “I was wearing it that morning. I think I dropped it.”
“Where do you think you might have dropped it?” Chalmers probed.
“I . . . I’ve really no idea. As I say, my recall of these events is far from perfect. Was it in the boat, perhaps? Or somewhere on the path? I don’t know.”
“I assume it would surprise you to hear that this was also found in Laura Kilbride’s flat?”
“Was it? Well . . . if I dropped it at the same time as I threw away the knife, then . . .” Theo sighed; he was exhausted. “What does it matter? I told you I did it, didn’t I? I don’t know how the girl got my scarf, I—”
“Ms. Kilbride believes that the scarf and the knife were planted in her flat in an attempt to incriminate her,” Barker said.
“Well . . .” Theo was baffled. “That may well be, but they weren’t planted by me, were they? First, I have no idea where she lives and b, I’ve just told you that they belong to me. Why would I plant them and then tell you that they’re mine? That makes no sense at all, does it?”
Barker shook his head. He looked very unhappy, Theo thought, not like a man who had just cracked a case at all. “It doesn’t make sense, Mr. Myerson, it really doesn’t. And the thing is,” he said, sitting up straight now, his elbows on the table and his fingers steepled before him, “the thing is that we found just one fingerprint on the knife, and it is yours. A thumbprint, to be exact. But since this is your knife, finding your fingerprint on it isn’t particularly surprising. Especially since the print we found is here”—Barker indicated a point on the side of the handle where it meets the blade—“which isn’t really where you’d expect a thumbprint to be if you were wielding a knife to stab someone, although it is where you would expect the thumbprint to be if you were, say, chopping onions.”
Theo shrugged, shaking his head. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I did it. I killed Daniel Sutherland because of his relationship with my ex-wife, Carla. If you bring me a piece of paper, I’ll write it all down. I’ll sign a confession now. Aside from that, I don’t think I want to say anything more, if that’s all right. Is that all right?”
Chalmers pushed her chair abruptly from the table; she looked annoyed. Barker shook his head miserably. Neither of them believed him, Theo thought, and the realization rankled. Why didn’t they believe him? Did they not think him capable of such a thing? Did he not look like a man who would kill for love, to protect his family? Who cared whether they believed him, he thought, glowing with virtue. He had done the right thing. He had saved her.