My conversation with Lauren was still on my mind when Davis and Timothy arrived at the hotel. We were due at the police station.
We ready for this? Timothy asked.
As we’ll ever be, said Davis.
I needed a drink. I needed a new job. I needed counselling. I needed her. What I had was a coat, a hang-dog expression, and the shoes she had picked out for me in the city. I put them on and went out of the room.
It was in many ways not what any of us had envisioned. There would be no arrest in the House of Representatives. There would be no great Sherlockian monologues. There would be three men—though that was putting it strongly—walking into a police station with a PowerPoint presentation on USB and an only semi-coherent case against a well-known former Shadow Minister. If the times had taught us anything at all, it was that such accusations were not worth much. In the event, though, they were worth even less.
Timothy stepped out of the data projector’s glare. The police had been able to wrangle one at the last minute. He retook his seat and put his hands together.
He had the keys. He had the motive. We think you’ll find that he’s your man.
The police sat in silence and looked us over.
Let’s make sure we understand you, they said. You’re accusing him of murder?
We realise some of the evidence is circumstantial, said Timothy. But we’re sure you’ll agree that—
Hang on a moment, mate. Just once more time. Murder, you say?
That’s correct, said Timothy.
Who said anything about murder? they asked.
Davis and Timothy turned to me slowly. Don’t look at me, I said, but they did.
When Howard Hawks was making The Big Sleep, he sent Raymond Chandler a telegram in order to clear up a question he had about the plot. He wanted to know whether the Sternwoods’ chauffeur was murdered by someone or whether he was a suicide. Damn it, Chandler is said to have replied. I don’t know that, either.
I was trying to remember what the police had said they day they had pulled me in about the storage unit. Had they used the word murder? Or only the word dead?
Kevin McInerney wasn’t murdered, they said.
I hadn’t been in the mood for them then and I wasn’t much in the mood for them now.
You’re wrong, I said.
Excuse me? they asked.
You’re wrong, I said again. I didn’t know what I was reacting against. The idea that McInerney had wound up in my storage unit without having been murdered made even less sense than the idea that he wound up there because he had been. The idea that I had wasted a month chasing shadows when I could have been living in my own made me livid. The idea that I had pushed her away made me wish I’d been found in the storage unit myself. It was my core than had proven rotten: I had bundled up everything wrong with me and called it love. Then, because the silence was deafening and because I could hear the heart steadily beating below the floorboards, I said: I did it.
You did what?
I killed McInerney, I said. I killed him and I put him in my storage unit. I did it.
I thrust my wrists across the desk at them. Davis shot Timothy a look of concern and the police exchanged sideways glances.
I don’t why I did it. I don’t know how I did it. All I know is that I did it. It was me.
Kevin McInerney died of an anaphylactic reaction, they said.
No, he didn’t, I said. I killed him. Please. I’m confessing. I’m asking you to arrest me.
He was at a dinner. He ate a dodgy prawn.
Another plate of prawns no one was likely to forget.
He had a reaction in your storage unit. He wasn’t able to take out his epi-pen in time.
Please, I said.
I was practically begging them.
You must have something you can arrest me for. I violated my terms of service.
You’ll have to take that up with the storage place, they said.
Davis gently lowered my arms and pulled my wrists back to our side of the table.
If anyone was breaking the law, they said, it was probably McInerney himself. Was there any reason he might have wanted to gain access to your storage unit?
No, I said.
Well, said Timothy. There was the Cullen.
The Cullen?
Timothy described the painting. He said McInerney had wanted to buy it from him and that he had refused him on multiple occasions. He said McInerney must have learned that it was in my storage unit.
Probably put two and two together, he said. The night you offered to store everybody’s things.
Or the night Roger said you were an art collector, said Davis.
But how did he get the keys? I asked.
I remembered the way the backbencher had emptied his pockets onto the bar. The way he had sifted through his things like a child.
That’s what they were arguing over, I said.
I want it, McInerney had said. I need it.
It sounded like someone else I knew.
And this didn’t strike you as the more likely explanation? You didn’t think to apply Occam’s razor?
I think I’m going to be sick, I said. They handed me a wastepaper basket and I started throwing up into it. Afterwards, once I’d cleaned my mouth and wasted half a box of their tissues, Timothy said: Well, I mean, it strikes me that way now.
They showed us out and thanked us for our time. They told the others to keep an eye on me.
You public servants are really something, they said. You realise you’ve spent the last month tracking down a set of keys that were here the whole time?
Yes, I said. We’re aware. Thank you.
What do you people even do? they asked.