‘We can do this in the morning, if you’re getting too tired.’ Detective Constable Eve King sits opposite me. She looks younger than me. Prettier too. Petite and able to carry off one of those pixie haircuts I’d love to have but that wouldn’t suit my taller, more rounded frame.
She has a gentle way about her, a face that shows sympathy. I have to remind myself why she is here and why she wants to talk to me in the first place.
‘I think I’d rather get this over and done with for now,’ I say.
‘And you’re sure you don’t want to have any legal representation?’
‘There’s no need. I’ve not done anything wrong.’ I wonder if I sound too defensive.
‘Okay,’ DC King says. ‘You can ask for legal representation at any time, and I’ll remind you that you are not under any direct suspicion at this time. However, we will be making a note of everything you say and if things change, this information could be used in any court proceedings.’
I nod, wonder how long it will take. I’m so tired by now I think I could lie in bed while the SOCOs searched around me and not be bothered.
‘When was the last time you spoke with your father?’ she asks, DC Black at her side, pen poised.
‘I’m not sure. Maybe it was around eight thirty. Nine perhaps. I brought him a cup of tea.’
‘And did you stay with him for any length of time?’
‘Not really. Five minutes maybe.’
‘And what did you do when you were there?’
I shift in my seat. I don’t want to tell her what I did when I was there. Things had become heated. Tension that had been simmering had boiled over. There’s no way she would understand. There’s no way in which telling her the truth would work in my favour.
I edit the facts in my head before I speak. ‘I sat with him, on the chair by his bed, for a bit while he drank some of his tea. We talked about how he was feeling and then he said he was tired and was going to sleep, so I left.’
‘And how did he say he was feeling?’
‘Still quite sore from his operation, lethargic too.’
‘And his frame of mind? How did that seem to you?’
Should I answer ‘needy as be-damned’? Would that start a whole other series of questions coming my way?
‘Well, he knew he was dying. You know, of cancer. He’d been quite low about that. And that he didn’t feel he was rallying from his operation the way he should.’
‘Had he expressed any thoughts of wanting to end his life?’ She is looking at me directly in the eyes.
I shake my head. ‘No. He wanted to hang on for as long as he could. He’s … he was … a stubborn old goat.’
She pauses. ‘I know in some circumstances like this, people who are terminally ill want to have some say in when they die. It’s understandable really, especially if they worry they may be facing a lot of pain as their illness progresses. Sometimes they may ask someone to assist them in ending their life …’
So, the police think this might have been some sort of mercy killing? That someone had helped him go gentle into that good night? If only they knew the truth about my father, they wouldn’t be so generous about anyone’s motives.
I shook my head. ‘He didn’t want to die yet. If you’re asking me if I performed some sort of mercy killing, you’re on the wrong track altogether,’ I said.
‘I’m not saying that’s what happened, of course,’ DC King says. ‘Although it would be understandable if someone wants to help someone end their life rather than see them suffer. Could he have asked any of the others?’
‘I can’t speak for what happened between my father and anyone else. But I’ll state again, it’s my firm belief that he didn’t want to die.’
Detective Constable King nods, pushes a stray lock of her hair behind her ear and readjusts herself on her seat before looking back at me.
‘After you left your father in his room that time, you didn’t go back to see him at all?’
I shake my head again. ‘No. I went downstairs. Watched a little TV with Stella and Auntie Kathleen. Stella went out to run some errands and Kathleen and I sat and chatted in the living room.’
She nods and DC Black scribbles furiously on his A4 pad of paper.
‘Did you notice anyone else go to see your father?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘We were all in and out all the time.’
‘Had you told the others he was going to sleep?’
Had I? I didn’t remember.
‘I don’t know. We were all so tired and stressed. Things had been tense.’
She raises one perfectly arched eyebrow. DC Black stops writing for just a moment and looks up, too.
‘How’s that?’ she says.
I’m getting tired now. Out of my depth. I’ve had enough.
‘There’s a complicated family dynamic here,’ I say, trying to choose my words very carefully. ‘And of course, knowing my father was dying was hard on us all.’
‘What do you mean by complicated family dynamic?’ she asks.
‘Aren’t all families complicated?’ I say. ‘It’s been a long day and a long evening.’ I can feel my lip start to tremble and I’m embarrassed to find that I’m on the brink of tears.
‘Take your time,’ DC King soothes and I roughly brush away a tear that has shamed me by running down my face.
‘Look, Heidi is the daughter of the woman he left my mother for. He raised Heidi after her mother died. I was still just a teenager. Things were difficult. Heidi and I never saw eye to eye and we still don’t. She was a very troubled child well into her teenage years. You know, mental health problems and the like.
‘My father did his best to do right by her – at the expense of his relationship with me at times – but she never seemed to view him with anything other than utter disdain. But that doesn’t mean she’d have done anything …’ I said, knowing full well that it meant she was more than capable of it all the same.
‘Of course it doesn’t,’ DC King says. ‘How did she appear on the night of your father’s death?’
‘Tense,’ I say. ‘But we all were. We were all walking on eggshells. Just the night before she had told us she wanted to sell this house as soon as possible. It goes to her, you see. It was her mother’s and although my father was allowed to live here until he died, or formed a new family, it was always going to go to Heidi.
‘It seemed very distasteful to have that conversation with him dying upstairs, but that’s Heidi, you see. Cold at times. And she has just become a mother and by all accounts the house she’s living in now isn’t big enough for a growing family …’
‘I imagine that conversation made you angry?’ DC King asked.
‘Well yes, of course it did. It was callous. But my anger was with Heidi and certainly not with my father. I mean, there’s no telling what she’s capable of … not that I’m saying it was her, of course,’ I say, even though I want the blame to be shifted squarely onto her shoulders. It might just teach her to be more sensitive to other people and their feelings.