“At first I couldn’t understand what had happened,” Sarbah went on, anguish on his face. “I saw blood, so much of it everywhere-on the bed, on the floor, on the walls-and then I saw my mother’s eyes were still open, looking at me and begging me to save her. I’ll never forget that. I saw red spraying from her neck, and I heard a gurgling sound and realized she was breathing through a gash in her throat. I remember saying, ‘Mama’ several times as I went to her and tried to lift her up in my arms, but her head fell back…”
Sarbah stopped talking. He was gulping down air in an apparent effort to control the grief that must have been as fresh as it had been that horrific night when he was only a young teenager. Dawson got up from his chair and kneeled down beside him.
“Take it easy, sir,” he said quietly. “Take a rest. You don’t need to finish it all right now.”
Sarbah fell back in his chair and took three deep breaths, as if trying to calm himself.
“Would you like some water?” Dawson asked.
Sarbah waved that away. “I’m okay.” He smiled wanly. “Now you understand why I don’t like to talk about this.”
“I do understand. I had no idea you had been through such a terrible trauma.”
“The murder itself was only the beginning of the nightmare,” Sarbah said, his voice even huskier than before. “You must be aware through your work, Inspector, how two or more eyewitnesses to the same crime can report completely different versions of what happened.”
Dawson, transferring to a chair closer to Sarbah’s than the original one, said, “I know the problem only too well.”
“Well, there you are. What I saw was not the same as what Simon said he saw. Our parents’ bedroom was dark when he and I got there. I believe I was in front of him-in fact I’m sure of it. He claimed I turned on the light, but I don’t remember doing that. I thought he switched it on at the wall after I had already entered the room. In any case, the first thing I recall seeing then were the bodies of my mother and stepfather, but Simon reported to the police that he saw a man leaving through the window, the same way he must have come in.”
“And he identified the man as Tiberius,” Dawson said, taking an educated guess.
“Yes, sir. The police questioned us over and over. I swore, and still do, that I never saw anyone else in the room-let alone my father-but Simon insisted.”
“Tiberius was taken into custody?”
“Yes, and interrogated for hours on end.” Sarbah looked directly at Dawson. “He denied he had anything to do with the killing, and I believe him till this day. Lots of things about Simon’s story didn’t add up. Did he see the man holding a weapon-a knife or machete? At first he said a knife, but then he changed his story and it was a machete. What was the man wearing? Simon couldn’t remember. Was the man bloody? ‘Yes, I think so.’ Why didn’t your half brother, Richard, also see this man? ‘I don’t know.’ His story was not holding up. Daddy didn’t have a great alibi, but neither could the police place him at the murder site.”
