“So you argued with him?” Eyebrow asked.
Laura nodded. She was looking at her feet. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“Did you fight? Was it physical?”
There was a stain on her trainer, right above the little toe of her left foot. A dark brown stain. She hooked her left foot behind her right ankle. “No, not . . . well. Not seriously.”
“So, there was violence, but not what you would term serious violence?”
Laura moved her left foot against the back of her right calf. “It was nothing,” she said. “It was just . . . handbags.”
She looked up at Egg, who was rubbing his forefinger over his thin lips. He in turn looked over at Eyebrow and she back at him, and something passed between them, wordless. An agreement. “Miss Kilbride, Daniel Sutherland’s body was discovered in his home on Sunday morning. Can you tell us exactly when you saw him last?”
Laura’s mouth was suddenly painfully dry, she couldn’t swallow, she heard a roaring in her ears, she squeezed her eyes tight shut. “Hang on . . .” She got to her feet, steadying herself on the table; she felt the world tip. She sat down again. “Hang on,” she said again. “His body? Are you saying . . . ?”
“That Mr. Sutherland is dead,” Egg said, his voice quiet and even.
“But . . . he’s not, is he?” Laura heard her own voice crack. Egg nodded, slowly. “Sunday morning? You said Sunday morning?”
“That’s right,” Egg replied. “Mr. Sutherland was discovered on Sunday morning.”
“But”—Laura could feel her pulse in her throat—“but I saw him on Friday night, I left Saturday morning. I left on Saturday morning. Seven, maybe, maybe even earlier than that. Saturday morning,” she repeated, one last time, for emphasis.
Eyebrow started to say something, her voice light and musical as though she was telling a funny story and was just about to get to the punch line. “Mr. Sutherland died of massive blood loss; he had knife wounds to the chest and neck. His time of death is yet to be formally established, but our science officer felt it likely to be around twenty-four to thirty-six hours before he was discovered. Now, you say you were with Mr. Sutherland on Friday night, is that right?”
Laura’s face burned, her eyes stung. Idiot. She was an idiot. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I was with him on Friday night.”
“On Friday night. And you went back to his houseboat with him, yes? You had sex with him, you said? Twice, wasn’t it? And what time exactly on Saturday morning did you leave Mr. Sutherland?”
A trap. It was a trap, and she’d walked straight into it. Idiot. She scraped her teeth over her lower lip, bit down hard. Don’t say anything, she imagined a solicitor would say to her. Don’t talk to anyone. She shook her head, a small sound coming from the back of her throat, seemingly without her volition.
“What was that? Laura? Did you say something, Laura?”
“I’m sorry he’s dead and everything,” she said, ignoring the advice coming from within her own head, “but I didn’t do anything. You hear me? I didn’t do anything. I didn’t stab anyone. Anyone who says I did is a liar. He was . . . I don’t know, he said stuff to me, stuff I didn’t like. I didn’t do anything. Maybe I hit him, maybe . . .” She could taste blood in her mouth; she swallowed hard. “Don’t . . . just don’t try to say that I did this, because I had nothing to do with it. Maybe there was some pushing and shoving, but that was it, you know, and then he was gone, so that was that, you know. That was that. It’s not my fault, you see, it’s not my fault, even . . . the fight or whatever, it’s not my fault.”
Laura could hear her own voice going on and on and on, rising higher and higher. She could tell what she sounded like, like a mad person ranting, like one of those crazy people who stands at a street corner and shouts at nothing, she knew that was what she sounded like and she couldn’t stop herself.
“Gone?” Eyebrow said. “You said, ‘Then he was gone.’ What did you mean by that, Laura?”
“I mean he was gone. He left, walked out, what d’you think? After we fought—not really fought, but you know—after that, he just put on his jeans and his shirt and he walked out and just left me there.”
“In his house . . . on his boat, alone?”
“That’s right. I suppose he was the trusting sort,” she said, and she laughed, which she knew was completely inappropriate and yet still, she couldn’t stop herself, because it was funny, the thought that he was trusting, wasn’t it? Under the circumstances? Not funny ha ha, maybe, but still. Once she’d started laughing, she found that she couldn’t stop; she felt herself going red in the face, as though she were choking. The detectives looked at each other.