Page 3 of A Slow Fire Burning

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’swhere 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? Shewasgoing 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 justwrecked, 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, “thankGod.” 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?”

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