louder, until the police car eventually swerves in front of me to a stop.
The doors fly open. Two policemen in uniform jump out and run towards me, yelling at me in Portuguese. Terrified, I raise my hands in the air. They rush me, hauling my arms behind my back and snapping on a pair of handcuffs, shouting something in a language I can’t understand.
The metal tears my skin and I gasp in pain but they don’t care. They hustle me into the back of the police car and I start to hyperventilate, the world distorting like a hall of mirrors as I look out the window, at the alley down which Konstandin vanished, the buildings seeming to grow giant, closing out the sky. Another patrol car arrives and the officers leap out of that car and race off in pursuit of Konstandin, though he’s had a head start.
By the time we arrive back at the police station some twenty minutes later, I’m so dazed that I can barely focus on what’s happening to me. I am led places and forced into chairs and given pieces of paper to sign. I should ask for a lawyer but I can’t seem to speak. It feels as though I’m underwater. Everything – every word and every face – is blurry and distorted. I’m sinking further and further to the bottom, drowning, just like Kate, I think to myself.
I’m searched and my belongings are taken away from me. A bored-looking woman behind a desk asks me to hand over the laces from my shoes and I bend down to unthread them but I take so long, my fingers so rubbery and useless, that Nunes – who has appeared, along with Reza, probably both to enjoy this moment of triumph – interrupts and tells them it’s fine, to leave me be. Eventually I find myself sitting in a room with a mirror along one wall, and a table with two chairs on either side. Reza sits down opposite me with a large manila folder. Nunes stands in his usual sentry position in front of the door.
‘Are you arresting me?’ I ask. I don’t know what the policeman who cuffed me and brought me here said, as it was in Portuguese, but I’m assuming they were arresting me.
‘Yes,’ Reza says. ‘You’ve been charged with murder.’
‘I didn’t do it,’ I say, then stop myself from saying anything more.
‘What’s that bruise on your face from?’ Reza asks.
My hands instinctively move to touch my cheek. I shake my head. I can’t tell her.
‘Why did you try to kill him?’ she asks.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘Who?’ she repeats, snorting with derision at my playing dumb. ‘Sebastian. Your landlord. We found him an hour ago. We were there to arrest you for one murder and what do we find? You’re leaving quite a trail. Any other murders we should know about?’
‘He’s dead?’ I stammer in horror. We shouldn’t have left him.
Reza holds my gaze. ‘No. You’re lucky. He was found in time. We know it was you who called the ambulance. We have the recording. So there’s no point in denying it. You had a motive. You were angry with him for telling us about you and Konstandin. Maybe he knew more. You wanted to silence him.’
‘No! It was an accident,’ I splutter. ‘I can explain …’
‘So, you’re admitting you caused the injuries?’ she asks, leaning forwards, eyes flashing with triumph.
‘No! He fell!’ Oh God. I’m putting my foot in it.
She leans back in the chair, eyes resting on me, carefully appraising, and I bite my lips shut to stop myself from saying anything else incriminating.
‘We have Kate’s Facebook messages and phone records,’ she says after a while. ‘We subpoenaed them. They confirm the affair with your husband, so we have a motive. We also have witnesses who saw you two fighting.’
‘Outside the bar?’ I blurt. ‘That’s not true! We weren’t fighting.’
‘We know you are friends with a man with criminal connections,’ she continues, reading off the evidence they have against me as though it’s incontrovertible. ‘Who was also there tonight at the scene of the crime. We have a witness.’
The damn pizza boy.
‘There’s a warrant out for Konstandin Zeqiri’s arrest.’
‘But it wasn’t him! He had nothing to do with it.’
She ignores me. ‘It’s lucky a witness recognised you both after seeing you on the news and called it in to the police.’
Yes, I think to myself, very lucky. She must be talking about the taxi driver. The police must have rushed to