When Daniel could sit for long enough to answer, he went to the station for a voluntary suspect interview under caution. He had taken advice before going. The solicitor sat beside him in the interview room, her notebook closed until he was ready.
Leah had her own account to give. They hadn't practised agreeing. He had left her waiting with her coat on, holding a paper cup between both hands.
Daniel put the phone on the table, with the original recording and the messages kept where he'd been told to keep them. There were dates written on a sheet of paper. June. July. August. September. October. November.
They looked impossibly orderly.
He began with Jonas because he wasn't willing to make Silas's death the thing which erased everything before it.
“I knew it was him.”
He said it again. It didn't become easier through repetition.
The officer asked what he meant by knew. Daniel explained. The voice, the way he moved, the smell. He could hear how strange the last part sounded and left it in.
There were questions about the knife, the food, the phone call to Leah. He answered without making Jonas's defence into a provocation.
Then the river.
He described the offer of return. The decision to use the race. The line. Leah's position. Where the first pull had failed. Silas's hand at his chest. His own arm blocking it.
He said he'd pushed.
“Once?”
“More than once.”
The pen moved.
“Did you want him to die?”
Before Daniel answered, the solicitor asked for a break so they could speak privately. He wanted to get up and find Leah. He stayed in his chair after the officer left while the solicitor asked exactly when he had decided to bring Silas to the river.
“Before I invited him,” he said.
He had thought he had made that clear. Saying it again, with the officer outside and a dead man in the account, made him understand why she had stopped him.
When the interview resumed, the officer repeated the question about wanting Silas dead. Daniel looked at the window. Someone was taking a bin back up the street.
“Yes,” he said.
It was not the only thing he had wanted. It was enough for the question.
The officer asked him to go through the movement again.
Daniel did, using his left hand to indicate where the wall had been. The fingers curled painfully and he set it down. There was no neat demonstration with a whole body. He had been ordinary, cold, hurt, and he had made choices.
Then she asked about the rehearsal. About the harness. About who had known what the line was for. Daniel answered. The wolf had filled their bedroom on the recording; here it kept shrinking into something they could doubt, while the rope and the invitation stayed their full size.
He left without charge, still a suspect in an open investigation. The officer requested a further interview, and Daniel and his solicitor agreed a date. He would have to cancel a shift, arrange a lift, go through it again. There was no decision he could take home as proof that he was safe from what he had done.
At home, Leah came into the kitchen. She had made tea before they went out; the pot was still on the table.
“Tea?”
“Cold.”
“I'll make more.”
“You don't have to.”
“I want tea.”
He moved the papers aside. Under the dates of the moons he wrote the date of the next interview. Then he called Ruth and told her he couldn't work on that date.
The new wound in his right arm pulled when he reached for the mug. The left couldn't take the weight comfortably. He lifted it with both and drank.
Later in the week Jonas agreed to see him.
At the inn this time. Not in the kitchen. He sat by the window with a cup and a folder, looking almost as though he were waiting for a meeting about an order.
Daniel sat when he was told he could.
“Leah said he's dead.”
“Yes.”
“And that means it's gone.”
“Yes.”
Jonas looked at the dressing visible below Daniel's sleeve.
“That's staying.”
“For now.”
“You can't put it somewhere.”
“No.”
Jonas opened the folder.
There were costs written inside. Ingredients, help, transport, time. A business beginning in sums because that was the part he could make definite.
“I don't want you doing all of it,” he said.
“All right.”
“I need somebody I can ask without this happening every time.”
Daniel looked at the paper.
“Yes.”
“But there are things I want from you. Work things.”
“Tell me.”
Jonas did. Taste. A recipe written clearly enough for someone else to follow. One early session, when Daniel was fit enough, to show the person he'd found how he'd balanced the ginger.
Daniel wrote what he'd been asked for.
The pen slipped once. He changed the angle, then held the paper down with the heel of his left hand. Jonas waited.
When it was finished, Jonas looked at the list.
“The bite doesn't—”
He stopped.
Daniel understood.
“No. It doesn't make you into anything.”
“Good.”
His voice was rough.
“That was the first thing I thought when I read your message. Afterwards, I mean. Once I could think.”
“I should have said.”
“Yes.”
Daniel wanted to apologise. He'd already apologised so often that the word had begun to seem like something he put down between them because he didn't know what else to bring.
He left it alone.
“How are the fingers?”
Jonas looked at his hand.
“Two move better. One not much. Depends when you ask.”
“Still seeing them?”
“Yes.”
He didn't offer a prognosis.
Outside, Ruth came past carrying a tray. Jonas moved his chair to give her room. His body remembered helping before his arm could follow.
Daniel saw it.
Jonas saw him see it.
Neither spoke until Ruth had gone.
“Don't tell me about him,” Jonas said.
“Silas?”
“I don't want to hear he was worse.”
Daniel looked down.
“I wasn't going to.”
“You might.”
“Yes.”
Jonas shut the folder.
They arranged the kitchen session for the following week. Daniel would be able to stand for it by then, perhaps, if the arm continued healing and he took the rest he was told to take.
He left without asking whether they could be friends again.
At home Leah was reading the contract from the yard, making a note in the margin. There was a date for arriving, a name to call if she was late, directions which assumed everyone knew where the old gate was.
“Do you?” he asked.
“What?”
“Know where the old gate is.”
“No.”
“Helpful.”
“Apparently it's obvious.”
He stood behind her and read over her shoulder. She tilted the paper so he could see.
The room was warm. The light was on. His hands hurt.
He wanted to hold all of it without making anything stop.