Slow Fire Burning (9780385689670) Read online

  * * *

  Once the detective had gone, officers cordoned off the towpath between De Beauvoir and Shepperton, moving along all the boats save his, the crime scene, and hers. At first, they’d tried to persuade her to leave, but she made it clear she’d nowhere else to go. Where were they going to house her? The uniformed officer she spoke to, young, squeaky-voiced, and spotty, looked perturbed by this shifting of responsibility, from her shoulders to his. He looked up at the sky and down at the water, up and down the canal and back to her, this small, fat, harmless middle-aged woman, and relented. He spoke to someone on a radio and then came back to tell her she could stay. “You can go back and forth to your own . . . uh . . . residence,” he said, “but no further than that.”

  That afternoon, Miriam sat out on the back deck of her boat in the pallid sunshine, taking advantage of the unusual quiet of the closed-off canal. With a blanket pulled around her shoulders and a cup of tea at her elbow, she watched the policemen and the scene of crime officers scurrying back and forth, bringing dogs, bringing boats, searching the towpath and its borders, poking around in the murky water.

  She felt oddly peaceful, given the day she’d had, optimistic almost, at the thought of new avenues opening up before her. In the pocket of her cardigan she fingered the little key on its key ring, still sticky with blood, the one she’d picked up off the floor of the boat, the one whose existence she’d withheld from the detective without even really thinking about why she was doing it.

  Instinct.

  She’d seen it, glinting there next to that boy’s body—a key. Attached to a little wooden key ring in the form of a bird. She recognized it straightaway; she’d seen it clipped to the waistband of the jeans worn by Laura from the launderette. Mad Laura, they called her. Miriam had always found her quite friendly, and not mad at all. Laura, whom Miriam had witnessed arriving, tipsy, Miriam suspected, at that shabby little boat on that beautiful boy’s arm, two nights ago? Three? She’d have it in her notebook—interesting comings and goings, they were the sort of thing she wrote down.

  Around dusk, Miriam watched them carry the body out, up the steps and onto the street, where an ambulance was waiting to take him away. She stood as they walked past her; out of respect, she bent her head and said a quiet and unbelieving Go with God.

  She whispered a thank-you too. For by mooring his boat next to hers and then getting himself brutally murdered, Daniel Sutherland had presented Miriam with an opportunity she could simply not allow to slide by: an opportunity to avenge the wrong that had been done to her.

  Alone now and, despite herself, a little afraid in the darkness and strange quietude, she took herself into her boat, bolting and padlocking the door behind her. She took Laura’s key from her pocket and placed it in the wooden trinket box she kept on the top bookshelf. Thursday was laundry day. She might give it back to Laura then.

  Or then again, she might not.

  You never knew what was going to turn out to be useful, did you?

  THREE

  Mrs. Myerson? Do you need to sit down? There you go. Just breathe. Would you like us to call anyone, Mrs. Myerson?”

  Carla sank down onto her sofa. She folded in half, pressing her face to her knees; she was whimpering, she realized, like a dog. “Theo,” she managed to say. “Call Theo, please. My husband. My ex-husband. He’s in my phone.” She looked up, scanning the room; she couldn’t see the phone. “I don’t know where it is, I don’t know where I—”

  “In your hand, Mrs. Myerson,” the woman detective said gently. “You’re holding your phone in your hand.”

  Carla looked down and saw that so she was, gripping her mobile tightly in her violently trembling hand. She shook her head, handing the phone to the policewoman. “I’m going mad,” she said. The woman pressed her lips into a small smile, placing a hand on Carla’s shoulder for just a moment. She took the phone outside to make the telephone call.

  The other detective, Detective Inspector Barker, cleared his throat. “I understand that Daniel’s mother is deceased, is that right?”

  Carla nodded. “Six . . . no, eight weeks ago,” she said, and watched the detective’s eyebrows shoot up to where his hairline might once have been. “My sister fell,” Carla said, “at home. It wasn’t . . . it was an accident.”

  “And do you have contact details for Daniel’s father?”

  Carla shook her head. “I don’t think so. He lives in America, he has done for a long time. He’s not involved, he’s never been involved in Daniel’s life. It’s just . . .” Her voice cracked; she took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. “It was just Angela and Daniel. And me.”

  Barker nodded. He fell silent, standing ramrod straight in front of the fireplace, waiting for Carla to compose herself. “You’ve not lived here very long?” he asked, after what Carla imagined he thought to be a respectful pause. She looked up at him, bemused. He indicated with one long forefinger the boxes on the dining room floor, the paintings leaning against the wall.

  Carla blew her nose loudly. “I’ve been meaning to hang those paintings for the best part of six years,” she said. “One day I’ll get round to getting picture hooks. The boxes are from my sister’s house. Letters, you know, photographs. Things I didn’t want to get rid of.”

  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?”

  Chalmers nodded. “We’re estimating time of death sometime between eight p.m. Friday night and eight a.m. Saturday morning.”

  “Oh.” Theo was rubbing his head again, staring out the window.

  “Have you thought of something, Mr. Myerson?”

  “I saw a girl,” Theo said. “Saturday morning. It was early—six, maybe? Out on the towpath, going past my house. I was standing in my study and I saw her; I remember her because she had blood on her. On her face. On her clothing, I think. She wasn’t drenched in it or anything, but . . . but it was there.”

  Carla gawped at him, incredulous. “What are you talking about? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You were sleeping,” Theo said. “I got up, I was going to make coffee, and I went to get my cigarettes from the study. I saw her, out of the window. She was young, probably not much more than twenty, and she was coming along the towpath. Limping. Or swaying, maybe? I thought she was drunk. I didn’t . . . really think much of it, because London is awash with strange, drunk people, isn’t it? That time of day, you often see people, on their way home. . . .”

  “With blood on them?” Barker asked.

  “Well, perhaps not. Perhaps not the blood. That’s why I remembered her. I thought she’d fallen, or been in a fight, I thought . . .”

  “But why didn’t you say anything?” Carla said.

  “You were asleep, Cee, I didn’t think—”

  “Mrs. Myerson was asleep at your home,” Chalmers interrupted, frowning. “Is that right? You stayed the night with Mr. Myerson?”

  Carla nodded slowly, her expression one of utter bewilderment. “We’d had dinner on Friday; I stayed over.”

  “Although we’re separated, we still have a relationship, you see, we often—”

  “They don’t care about that, Theo,” Carla said sharply, and Theo flinched. She pressed a Kleenex to her nose. “Sorry. I’m sorry. But it’s not important, is it?”

  “We never know what’s going to be important,” Barker said enigmatically, and started moving toward the hall. He handed out business cards, said something to Theo about formal identification, about family liaison, about staying in touch. Theo nodded, slipping the business card into his trouser pocket, and shook the detective’s hand.

  “How did you know?” Carla asked suddenly. “I mean, who was it, who reported . . . who found him?”

  Chalmers looked at her boss, then back at Carla. “A woman found him,” she said.

  “A woman?” Theo asked. “A girlfriend? Was she young? Slim? I’m just thinking of the person I saw, the one with the blood, perhaps she—”

  Chalmers shook her head. “No, this was someone living on another of the narrowboats, not a young woman—middle-aged, I’d say. She noticed that the boat hadn’t moved in some time and went to check up on him.”

  “She didn’t see anything, then?” Theo asked.

  “She was very helpful, actually,” Barker said. “Very observant.”

  “Good,” Theo said, rubbing the top of his head. “Very good.”

  “A Mrs. Lewis,” Barker added, and Chalmers corrected him: Ms. “That’s right,” he said. Carla watched the color drain from Theo’s face as Barker went on. “Ms. Miriam Lewis.”

  FOUR

  He started it, all right? Before you say anything. He started it.”

  They were waiting for her when she got home. Must have been, because they banged on the front door literally thirty seconds after she’d got in from the grocery store. She’d not even got her breath back—she was on the seventh floor and the lifts were out again—and there they were, and it just made her angry, and nervous too. So, like a fucking idiot, she started talking right away, which she knew full well you shouldn’t do. It’s not like this was her first time in trouble.

  Granted, usually it was a different sort of trouble. Public intoxication, petty theft, trespass, vandalism, disorderly conduct. She’d been found not guilty of simple assault on one occasion. One minor assault charge pending.

  But this wasn’t that. And she realized that almost right away because as she stood there huffing and puffing and running her mouth off, she thought, Hang on. These are detectives. They’d said their names and ranks and all that, which she’d forgotten right away but still: they were standing in front of her in plain clothes, and that was a whole different order of trouble.

  “Would you mind if we came in, Miss Kilbride?” the bloke said, politely enough. He was tall, rangy, bald as an egg. “It might be better to talk about this inside.” He cast a beady eye at the kitchen window, which she’d boarded up, badly.

  Laura was already shaking her head. “I don’t think so, no. I don’t think so. I need an appropriate adult, you see, you can’t question me. . . . What’s this about anyway? Is this the guy in the bar because that’s already, you know, in the system. I’ve got a court summons, it’s stuck to my fridge with a magnet. You can see for yourself if you want—no, no, no, hang on. Hang on. That wasn’t an invitation to come in, it’s a figure of speech.”

  “Why would you need an appropriate adult, Miss Kilbride?” The other one—about a foot shorter than her colleague, wiry dark hair, small features all crowded together in the middle of her big moon face—raised her monobrow. “You’re not a minor, are you?”

  “I’m twenty-five, as well you know,” Laura snapped.

  She couldn’t stop them—Egg was already halfway down the hallway, Eyebrow pushing past, saying, “How on earth would we know that?”

  “Who started what, Miss Kilbride?” Egg called out. She followed his voice into her kitchen, where he was bent over, hands clasped behind his back, peering at the summons. Laura huffed, loudly, and shuffled over to the sink to get some water. She needed to compose herself. Think. When she turned back to face him he was looking first at her and then over her shoulder, at the window. “Had some trouble?” He raised his eyebrows, innocent-like.

  “Not exactly.”

  The other one appeared, beetling her brow. “Have you hurt yourself, Laura?” she asked.

  Laura drank her water too quickly, coughed, scowled at the woman. “What happened to Miss Kilbride? Eh? We’re m
ates, now, are we? BFFs?”

  “Your leg, Laura.” He was at it too. “How did you hurt it?”

  “I was hit by a car when I was a kid. Compound break to the femur. Got a wicked scar,” she said, moving her fingers to the fly of her jeans. She held his eye. “You wanna see it?”

  “Not particularly,” he said mildly. “What about your arm?” He indicated with a finger the bandage wrapped around her right wrist. “That didn’t happen when you were a kid.”

  Laura bit her lip. “Lost my key, didn’t I? Friday night. Had to break in when I got back.” She jerked her head backward, indicating the kitchen window, which gave onto the exterior walkway running the length of the apartment block. “Didn’t do a very good job.”

  “Stitches?”

  Laura shook her head. “Wasn’t that bad.”

  “Did you find it?” He turned away from her, wandering through the alcove connecting the kitchen to the living room, casting about like he was considering making an offer on the place. Not likely; the flat was a tip. She knew she ought to be ashamed of it, of the cheap furniture and the blank walls and the ashtray on the floor that someone had kicked over, so now there was ash in the carpet and fuck knows how long that had been there because she didn’t even smoke and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had someone over, but she couldn’t bring herself to care enough.

  “Well? Did you?” Eyebrow wrinkled her nose as she took Laura in, head to toe and back again, her baggy jeans, stained T-shirt, chipped nail polish, greasy hair. Sometimes Laura forgot to shower, sometimes for days; sometimes the water was scalding and sometimes it wasn’t hot at all, like now, because the boiler had packed up again and she’d no money to get it fixed and no matter how many times she called the council they still did fuck all.