A Slow Fire Burning

by Paula Hawkins

  “It’s mine,” Theo said quietly, still looking at the knife, rather than the detectives. “It belongs to me.”

  “Right,” Barker said. “And can you tell us when you last saw this knife?”

  Theo took a deep breath. For a moment, he saw himself back in his living room with Irene Barnes, he saw the pictures that Daniel had drawn, the vulgar images of his beautiful wife, the graphic depiction of his little boy’s death, he saw himself rending the pages from the book before throwing them into the fire. He exhaled, slowly. Here we go. “Well,” he said, “it would have been the morning of the tenth.”

  “The tenth of March?” Detective Barker gave his colleague the briefest of glances. He leaned forward in his chair. “That would be the morning Daniel Sutherland died?”

  Theo rubbed his head with his forefinger. “That’s correct. I threw it away. The knife. Uh . . . I was going to throw it into the canal, but then I . . . I saw someone. I thought I saw someone coming along the path, and I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, so I just threw it into the bushes on the side of the path instead.”

  The detectives exchanged another look, longer this time. Detective Barker cocked his head to one side, his lips pressed together. “You threw the knife into the bushes? On the morning of the tenth? So, you’re saying, Mr. Myerson, you’re saying . . .”

  “That I went to Daniel’s boat early that morning, while my wife was still asleep. I . . . stabbed him. There was blood, of course, a great deal of blood. . . . I washed it off myself in the boat. Then I left, and I threw the knife into the bushes on the way home. As soon as I got home, I showered. Carla was sleeping. I made coffee for both of us, then I took it to her in bed.”

  Detective Barker’s mouth fell open for a moment. He closed it. “Okay.” He looked at his colleague again and Theo thought, though it was quite possible he was imagining things at this point, that he saw Chalmers shake her head, very slightly. “Mr. Myerson, you said earlier that you did not wish to have legal representation here for this interview, but at this point I’m going to ask you again if you’d like to change your mind? If there is someone you would like us to call, we can do that, or alternatively we can arrange for the duty solicitor here at the station to come in.”

  Theo shook his head. The last thing he wanted was a lawyer, someone trying to mitigate outcomes, someone overcomplicating what in the end was a simple thing. “I’m quite all right on my own, thank you.”

  Barker read the caution then. He pointed out that Theo had come in willingly, that he had refused legal representation, but that in light of what he had just said, it was clear that a formal caution was needed.

  “Mr. Myerson.” Detective Barker was struggling to keep his tone even, Theo could tell—this must, after all, be an exciting moment for a detective. “Just to clarify, you are confessing to the killing of Daniel Sutherland, is that right?”

  “That’s correct,” Theo said. “That is correct.” He took a sip of water. Took another deep breath. Here we go again. “My sister-in-law,” Theo said, and then stopped speaking. This was the difficult part, the part he was going to struggle with, the part he didn’t want to say out loud.

  “Your sister-in-law?” Chalmers prompted, her face an open book now; she was astonished by what she was hearing. “Angela Sutherland? What about Angela Sutherland?”

  “Angela told me, before she died, that my wife, my . . . Carla, and Daniel were having a relationship.”

  “A . . . relationship?” Chalmers repeated. Theo nodded, squeezed his eyes tightly shut. “What sort of relationship?” she asked.

  “Please don’t,” Theo said, and he surprised himself by starting to cry. “I don’t want to say it.”

  “You’re saying there was a sexual relationship between Carla and Daniel, is that what you’re telling us?” Barker asked. Theo nodded. Tears dripped from the end of his nose onto his jeans. He hadn’t cried in years, he thought, all of a sudden. He’d not cried when he sat at his son’s graveside on what should have been his eighteenth birthday, and now here he was, in a police station, crying over this. “Angela Sutherland told you about their relationship?”

  Theo nodded. “I went to see her, about a week before she passed away.”

  “Can you tell us about that, Mr. Myerson? Can you tell us what happened when you went to see her?”

  * * *

  “I think it’s best if I show you,” Angela said to him. “Would you . . . would you just come upstairs?”

  Theo followed her into the hallway. As he watched her climbing the stairs, he imagined the things that she had up there, the things she wanted to show him. Daniel’s things, presumably. More pictures, perhaps? Notes? Text messages? The thought turned his stomach. Theo started up the stairs after her. He imagined the look on her face when she showed him, pitying, but with a hint of triumph, a hint of I told you so. Look at your beautiful wife. Look at what she does with my son. A few steps from the landing, he stopped. Angela was waiting for him, looking down at him, and she looked afraid. He remembered how she had cowered in front of him, the day that Ben died; he remembered how he had longed to grab her, to throttle her, to dash her head against the wall.

  He felt nothing of that now. He turned away from her, starting back down the stairs. He heard her crying as he opened the front door and closed it behind him. He stepped out into the bright afternoon sunlight, pausing to light a cigarette before he set off toward home. As he walked along the lane, toward St. Peter’s churchyard, he was overcome with longing for a time when he didn’t hate Angela, when actually he had loved her very dearly, for the time when his heart used to lift when he saw her; she was always so much fun, such enjoyable company, she always had so much to say. Such a very long time ago now.

  * * *

  “Can you tell us about that, Mr. Myerson? Can you tell us what happened when you went to see her?”

  Theo wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He wasn’t going to tell the police about that, about his longing. It wouldn’t serve his purposes now, would it, to tell them that he had loved her once, as a sister, as a friend?

  “She told me that there was something going on between Daniel and my wife. We argued about it. Not . . . I didn’t touch her. I wanted to. I wanted to wring her scrawny neck, but I didn’t. I didn’t push her down the stairs either. As far as I’m aware, Angela’s death was an accident.”

  As far as he was aware. And he was not about to admit to the police that for the rest of his days, whenever he thought of Angela, he would think of her as she was that day, crying at the top of the stairs, and he would think of the words he spoke to her, when he called her lazy and neglectful and a bad mother, and he would wonder whether those were the last words that anyone ever spoke to her. He would wonder if, when she teetered at the top of the staircase or lay dying at the bottom of it, his was the eulogy she heard.

  “So you argued, you left. . . . Did you confront your wife? Did you ask her about what Angela had told you?”

  “I did not.” Theo shook his head. “There are some questions,” he said softly, “which you don’t want answered. Which you never want answered. In any case, it wasn’t long after that conversation that Angela died, and I was hardly going to bring up the conversation with my wife then, while she was grieving. But I suspected . . . I felt sure that Daniel would use his mother’s death to try to get closer to Carla. I couldn’t bear that. I just wanted him gone.”

  Detective Chalmers paused the recording. She and Barker got up from the table and said they were going to take a short break; they offered him coffee, which he refused. He asked for a bottle of water instead, fizzy if they had any. Chalmers said she’d do her best.

  * * *

  It was over. The worst was over.

  Then it struck him that the worst wasn’t over at all. The newspapers! Oh, God, the newspapers. The things people would say, on the internet, on social media. Christ almighty.
He hung his head, his shoulders heaving, and he wept. His books! No one would buy them any longer. The only good thing he’d ever done—apart from Ben, apart from loving Carla—was his work, and it would be tarnished, forever, along with his name. His books would be taken from the shelves, his legacy ruined. Yes, Norman Mailer stabbed his wife with a penknife and William Burroughs fatally shot his, but times were different now, weren’t they? Times had changed; people were so intolerant, you couldn’t get away with that sort of thing any longer. One step out of line and you were canceled.

  * * *

  By the time the detectives came back to the room, Chalmers carrying a bottle of Evian, which was, of course, not fizzy, Theo had collected himself—wiped his eyes, blown his nose, steeled himself. Reminded himself of what was truly important.

  The detectives had something else to show him—a photograph this time, of a young woman. “Have you seen this person before, Mr. Myerson?” DC Chalmers asked.

  Theo nodded. “She’s the one you charged with the murder. Kilbride, yes?” He looked up at them.

  “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.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Carla only wanted to hear him deny it.

  That Friday night at Theo’s house, a couple of days after she’d read Daniel’s notebook, she fell asleep early, dead drunk, only to jerk awake a few hours later. Her head aching and her mouth dry, the scenes Daniel had drawn ran like a newsreel across the ragged screen of her mind. Beside her, Theo softly snored. She got up. No point just lying there, she wouldn’t sleep again. She dressed quietly, picked up her overnight bag, and softly padded down the stairs. She drank a glass of water, standing at the sink, and then another. She’d had more than a bottle of wine the night before, more than she’d drunk in a single sitting in years, and the pain behind her eyes was blinding. She found a box of paracetamol in the downstairs loo and took three.

  Back in kitchen, she looked for pen and paper to leave a note. Couldn’t sleep, gone home, something like that. He would be hurt, he wouldn’t understand, but she didn’t have space for his feelings now; she didn’t have space for anything. Only Daniel.

  She couldn’t find a pen. It didn’t matter; she would call him later. She’d call him in a while. They’d have to talk about it sometime; she’d have to come up with some sort of story for why she’d been feeling the way she had, acting the way she had.

  You look shell-shocked, Cee, he said to her when she turned up, as usual, for Friday night dinner. Are you having trouble sleeping? She’d told him she was and he’d pressed: When did it start, what was the trigger? She hadn’t wanted to talk about it. After a drink, she said; she drank two gin and tonics before they started on the wine. Didn’t eat a thing. No wonder she felt like this.

  No wonder.

  She could see, looking through the kitchen doors, that there was frost on the lawn. It was going to be cold out. She put on her gloves and grabbed from the hallway one of Theo’s old scarves, which she draped around her shoulders. As she walked back through the kitchen, she noticed that the knife Theo had been using to slice the lemons for her gin and tonic was still there. Just lying there, on the chopping board.

  She only wanted to hear him deny it.

  She let herself out the kitchen door, drawing the scarf tighter around her neck as she went. She unlocked the back gate, stepped out onto the deserted towpath, and turned left, toward home.

  A gentle mist, silver in the moonlight, rose off the water. The lights of the narrowboats were all out; it must
have been four thirty, five perhaps? Still dark. Carla walked slowly, with her hands dug deep into her pockets and her nose tucked into the scarf. She walked a hundred yards, two hundred, she passed the steps she would usually climb to take her home, she kept going.

  Her mind seemed to clear in the cold. She could go to him now. She would hear him deny it, hear him say, This isn’t true, it’s not real, it’s just . . . just what? What could it possibly be? A fantasy? A nightmare? What did it mean that sometime over the past few years he’d sat down and drawn those pictures, of himself, of her? Of her boy. What did it mean that he’d drawn them all like that?

  All she wanted was an explanation.

  As she approached the boat, she was surprised to hear voices, raised and angry. Instead of stopping and knocking on the window as she’d planned, she quickened her pace, kept walking along the path and up the steps to the bridge. She stood there, looking down on the boat, her breath quick and hot, clouding the air in front of her. After a moment or two, she saw him, saw Daniel climbing out onto the back deck of the boat. Dressed in jeans, he pulled a sweatshirt down over his naked torso as he stepped onto the path. He seemed to be saying something, but his words were snatched by the wind, spirited across the water. Carla watched him, rolling his head from side to side, pressing his hand to his neck. He took a few steps toward the bridge and then paused to light a cigarette. She held her breath, willing him to look up at her. He took a few drags from the cigarette and then flicked it away. Pulling the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head, he passed beneath the arch on which she stood.