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I shake my head. ‘No. I don’t.’
For a long moment Detective Owusu stares at me. I see what is in his eyes: the truth. He knows that Justin’s suicide note is a fiction. He knows that my tears are theatrical. He knows that I killed Birdie. And he knows that I know he knows. We are both still and silent in a glittering, crystalline moment of reckoning. I wait for him to throw something more back at me, to make onelast attempt to dislodge the truth from me. But he doesn’t. Instead, he smiles.
‘Well.’ He starts to get to his feet. ‘We shall see. But for now, I think our business here is done. Oh – but there is one thing. Only vaguely connected with the case. It has been mentioned a couple of times in my investigation that you had been trying to find Phineas Thomsen. TherealPhineas Thomsen, that is. I wonder – did you ever find him?’
I can feel a violent flush blooming through my body, radiating outwards from my stomach, and I try to catch it and halt it before it reaches my face. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Sadly not. It looks like he’s determined never to be found.’
‘He was very important to you?’
‘Yes. He was something of a role model, I suppose. As you can tell from me using his name all of these years. But also, Phin was Libby’s real father. Did you know that?’
‘Yes,’ says Samuel. ‘I did know that.’
‘That was my real incentive for wanting to find Phin. To bring about a reunion. For him to finally meet the daughter he hasn’t seen since she was a baby in a crib. But there you go, his loss. He was never really the dad type, I suppose you might say.’
I’m gabbling and I can tell that DI Owusu is reading my body language constantly, so I stop. I breathe in and out and I say, ‘It’s a shame. He’s missing out on such a wonderful relationship with such a wonderful girl. He really is.’
DI Owusu leaves a moment later. I press my back against the door as I close it behind him and let myself sink down on to the floor where for a few minutes I sit and shake.
