The Other Woman’s House (10 page)

He sighed. As Simon's temporary stand-in, he would do everything he could to find a dead woman that he didn't believe in – a woman in a green and lilac dress. He'd already put in a call to Cambridge police and made it clear to them that he expected them to take action, once they'd stopped laughing.

‘Sam?'

He looked up and saw a woman with cropped peroxide blonde hair, maroon plastic-framed glasses and shiny London-bus-red lipstick. She was wearing a long pink sleeveless dress and flat gold sandals, carrying a bag with holes in it that looked as if it was made from lots of offcuts of rope knotted together; the holes were a design feature, not the result of wear and tear, and enabled Sam to see some of the bag's contents: a red wallet, an envelope, some keys.

‘Alice Bean.' She smiled and held out her hand. ‘You have no idea how weird this is for me. I haven't set foot in this place for nearly seven years. If I have a funny turn, you'll know why.'

‘Can I get you a drink?' Sam asked, shaking her hand.

‘Lime cordial and lemonade would be lovely. Lots of ice. I know it's a kid's drink, but in this heat, nothing else will do. I must have sweated at least a pint in the car on the way here.'

Sam watched her out of the corner of his eye as he queued at the bar. She was undeniably pretty, but the hair had surprised him – its shortness and its colour. And the maroon glasses, and the lipstick most of all. He wouldn't have thought Simon would…But that was assuming she'd looked the same seven years ago, and that Simon's taste in women would be easy to predict. Why should it be, when nothing else about him was? He'd proposed marriage to Charlie when she wasn't even his girlfriend.

‘So Connie gave you my number?' Alice said as Sam put her drink down on the table in front of her.

‘She didn't. I didn't ask her for it. I looked you up in the
Yellow Pages
, under “Alternative Health – Homeopaths”. There were no Alice Fancourts, but I figured Alice Bean might work, and it did.'

‘Bean's my maiden name. I haven't been Fancourt for years.'

‘Do you normally work Saturdays?'

‘No. I wasn't working today. I popped into the centre to pick up a remedy for my daughter, Florence, who's got a tummy bug. You were lucky to catch me. And I hope you don't catch the bug, but you might, so don't say I didn't warn you. I had it before Florence and everyone at work had it before me. It's a spreader, that's for sure. Passes out of your system quickly, though, on the plus side. Twenty-four hours of vomiting and diarrhoea and then it moves on to the next poor sucker.'

Great. Something to look forward to.

‘I won't keep you long,' Sam told her. ‘If your daughter's ill.'

‘She'll be fine. She's with my friend Briony, who's like a second mum to her. Keep me as long as you like. I promise not to make it hard for you by asking awkward questions.'

Sam tried not to look surprised. Wasn't he supposed to be the one with the questions? ‘Like what?' he said.

‘About Simon. He wouldn't want you to talk about him to me – I know he wouldn't.' Alice reached into her bag, pulled out the envelope Sam had seen through the holes, and held it out for him to take. He saw Simon's name on the front in blue handwriting, underlined. ‘Could you give him this?'

Sam was aware of not wanting to take it from her, but couldn't think why at first. Then his brain caught up with his gut.
No thanks
. Whatever the drama was, he didn't want even
a minor role. His hands stayed where they were, wrapped round his coffee mug. Eventually Alice put the envelope back in her bag, and he felt petty and self-important, knowing that he'd turned the focus from her and Simon to himself and his scruples; he wished he'd taken the damn thing. Ought he to tell her Simon got married yesterday, that he was on his honeymoon? Did it make it worse that it had happened only yesterday? Sam didn't think it should make a difference, but felt that it did, somehow.

He opened his mouth to try and explain why he didn't think it was a good idea for him to act as go-between, but Alice talked over him, smiling to show she wasn't offended. ‘What did you want to ask me about Connie? Is she okay?'

‘When did you last speak to her?'

‘I see her once a fortnight. The last time was…Hang on, I can tell you exactly.' She pulled a small pink diary out of her miniature fisherman's net. ‘Last Monday, four o'clock.'

‘As in the one just gone? Monday 12 July?'

Alice nodded.

‘Since then, have you spoken to her on the phone? Emailed or texted her?'

‘No. Nothing.'

‘And she didn't ring you in the early hours of this morning?'

Alice looked worried. She leaned forward. ‘No. Why? Has something happened?'

‘She's fine, as far as I can tell,' said Sam. He wasn't prepared to say more than that.

‘Why the early hours of this morning?' Alice persisted. ‘Why did you ask that?'

Because that was when a dead woman appeared on her computer screen, and then disappeared. And she told me you'd
recommended she contact Simon Waterhouse, who would believe the unbelievable, if it were true. Except that you couldn't have recommended him at two this morning, because Alice didn't ring you then. She hasn't spoken to you since seeing the woman's body. Unless she lied about when she saw it.

‘Did you advise Connie to speak to Simon?' Sam asked.

‘I can't really discuss what I say to my patients or what they say to me. Sorry.'

‘I'm not asking you to tell me anything Connie hasn't told me herself. She said you recommended Simon as being unlike any other detective, willing to believe what most people would find implausible.'

Alice nodded. ‘That's right. That's what I said, almost word for word.'

‘Would I be right in thinking, then – and I'm not asking for details – that Connie was in some kind of…situation, or had a problem, and was worried that no one would believe her?'

‘I really can't go into the specifics, but…Connie came to see me initially because she'd had a shock – she didn't want to believe that something was the case, and yet she feared it was.'

‘When was this?' Sam asked.

‘January, so…six months ago.'

‘And you told her to go to Simon? Was there a criminal angle, then?'

Alice frowned as she considered it. ‘There was no evidence of anything illegal, but…Connie thought there might have been a crime involved, yes. But at the same time, she feared she was mad for thinking it.'

‘What did you think?'

‘I honestly had no idea. All I knew was that being psychologically and emotionally split in two was doing her no good
whatsoever. I thought that if she spoke to Simon, he could find out for her one way or the other.'

‘Whether a crime had been committed?'

Alice smiled. ‘I realise there's no great master list headed “All the crimes that have been committed ever”, but this particular crime would have been documented. Simon could have tracked down the evidence of it in a way that Connie couldn't.'

‘Do you remember when you first mentioned his name to her?' Sam asked.

‘Oh, not straight away. About a month ago, six weeks maybe. I tried to help her myself first, obviously, as I do with all my patients, but nothing I said or did seemed to work with Connie. If anything, she started to feel worse as time went on. That was when I realised she might need more than Anacardium or Medorrhinum. Sorry, they're homeopathic remedies – I forget sometimes that not everyone's as familiar with them as I am.'

‘Did Connie take your advice?' Sam asked. ‘Did she share her problem with Simon?'
Was that why he took two days off a couple of weeks ago?
He'd mumbled something vague about ‘wedding preparations', not making eye-contact. At the time, Sam had put it down to embarrassment; Simon was undoubtedly, if inexplicably, mortified to be in a relationship, and avoided referring to his attached status.

Alice looked apologetic. ‘Ask Connie,' she said. ‘I'm sure she'll tell you the whole story, if you're willing to listen sympathetically.'

‘Did her unlikely-sounding and possibly criminal problem involve a virtual tour of a house on a property website?' Sam asked. Alice's facial expression was the only answer he needed: she didn't know what he was talking about.

So Connie Bowskill had two impossible-to-believe problems, one since January and one since thirteen hours ago. Interesting.

Impossible to believe.

‘Did you advise Connie to talk to Simon because you genuinely believed she needed police help, or because you hoped he would contact you to ask about her?' As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Sam knew he'd overstepped the mark. ‘I'm sorry,' he said, holding up his hands. ‘That's a question I have no right to ask. Ignore it.'

‘Why, when it's one I can answer freely?' said Alice. ‘I genuinely believed Simon ought to hear about Connie's problem, because…well, because it was so odd, so unusual. It was either something truly horrible or nothing at all. I…' She stopped, stared down at the table. Sam was starting to wonder if he ought to prompt her when she said, ‘I've only just this second realised it, but I told her to speak to Simon because that was what
I
wanted to do. I wanted to talk to him about it. He and I haven't spoken since 2003, and – this, Connie's…issue that she had, made me want to be in touch with him again more than anything else ever has. It made me
miss
him, though I never really knew him in the first place. Oh, it's crazy! The funny thing is, I've always known absolutely for sure that one day he'd reappear in my life. And when you rang this morning…' She shook her head, looking past Sam out of the window.

He could guess what was coming next. When he'd rung this morning and asked her to meet him, she'd given her sick daughter to a friend and devoted the next two hours to writing the letter she'd wanted to write for the last seven years, the one Sam had refused to deliver.

‘Look, I'm sorry about—'

‘Don't be,' said Alice. ‘I shouldn't have tried to turn you into the very-likely-to-get-shot messenger. It was unethical. And unnecessary – I don't need you. I know where Simon works – I could post the letter to him. I won't, though.' She nodded, as if to formalise the decision. ‘I'm a firm believer in fate, and today fate's made it clear to me that now's not the right time. I bet you're not used to thinking of yourself as an agent of fate, are you?' She grinned.

‘I'm not.' Colin Sellers would have had a jokey response ready, but Sam couldn't think of one.

Alice closed her eyes and took a sip of her drink. ‘The right time will come,' she said.

‘1.2
million
pounds? Oh…
Ow!
Ouch.' My mother has missed the five mugs lined up on the worktop and poured boiling water over her left hand instead. Deliberately, though I can't prove it. She has burned herself, and it's my fault for causing her more worry than she can cope with.
Again
. She wants everybody to notice and blame me. If they do, if Fran or Anton or Dad says, ‘Look what you've done, Con,' Mum will stick up for me, but her defence will be a veiled attack: ‘It wasn't Connie's fault – I should have known better than to look away, with a kettle full of boiling water in my hand, but I was so shocked, I couldn't help it.'

Is this what being close to someone means – knowing their limitations, their ego-boosting delusions and self-serving grottiness, as well as you know your own? Being able to predict their reactions, their facial expressions, down to the last word and grimace, so that disappointment and a sickening sense of predictability surge up and crush the breath out of you the moment you clap eyes on them, before anyone's uttered a word? Kit would say that was too pessimistic an analysis, but then he was never close to his parents, and now he has no relationship with them at all. He is for ever saying he envies me my membership of what he calls ‘the Monk clan'. I don't dare tell him the truth; he would accuse me of being ungrateful. He'd probably be right.

The truth is that I would rather be less close to my family, so that they could surprise me from time to time. So that their disapproval, when it came, wouldn't have the capacity to burrow so deeply into me and plant seeds of self-doubt, pre-programmed to grow to the size of large oak trees. At least Kit is free.

‘Come on, Benji,' Fran whispers. ‘One more bit of broccoli and then you can have a chocolate finger. Just the curly bit at the top.
Please
.'

‘Go on, Benji, mate – show Mummy and Daddy how brave you are. Like a superhero!' Anton doesn't bother to lower his voice. It hasn't occurred to him that there's anything more important going on in his parents-in-law's kitchen today than Benji's war on green vegetables; he feels no need to confine the broccoli negotiations to the background. Making a loudspeaker out of his hands, he puts on a booming voice and says, ‘Can one little boy defeat the broccoli monster? Is Benji brave enough to eat…his…broccoli? If he proves that he's as brave as a superhero, his reward will be two…chocolate…fingers!'

Am I going mad? Didn't Anton hear any of what I said, about seeing a murdered woman lying in a pool of blood, and talking to a detective this morning? Why is no one telling him to shut up? Did nobody hear me? That none of them should have anything to say on the subject seems as impossible to me as what I saw on my laptop last night – impossible, yet real, unless I've lost my capacity to distinguish reality from its opposite.

Kit thinks I have. Maybe my family do also, and that's why they're ignoring me.

‘Don't say two,' Fran admonishes Anton in a sing-song voice,
wearing an exaggerated smile in order, presumably, to prevent their son from wondering if the emotional carnage of a broken home might be all he has to look forward to. ‘One's enough, isn't it, Benji?'