The Other Woman’s House (22 page)

‘Alzheimer's?' Charlie asked.

‘I don't think so,' said Simon. ‘Mentally, he seemed as sharp as a twenty-year-old, even though he was leaning on a stick twice the width of his body. I didn't want to dismiss what he'd told me just because he was an antique, so off I went to Safesound Alarms in Trumpington…'

‘Where they'd never clapped eyes on Kit Bowskill before, or heard of him,' Charlie summed up.

‘No. They hadn't.'

‘So the old man made a mistake.'

‘He seemed sure,' Simon said doggedly. He sighed. ‘You're right. Despite his spectacular name, he must have got it wrong. What would Kit Bowskill be doing fitting burglar alarms?'

‘If I were as mad as you, I might say that if he's got two lives running concurrently, with a wife and a home in each, then he might have a job in each – data-system blah blah in Silsford, burglar alarm fitter in Cambridge. Maybe there's a strong anti-cop culture at Safesound Alarms, so they automatically deny everything when the police turn up.' Seeing Simon's worried frown, Charlie slapped his arm. ‘I'm kidding. I hope you told Connie Bowskill her husband's in the clear.'

‘Not yet. I didn't want to get her hopes up. Just because none of the neighbours have seen him at the house doesn't mean he hasn't been there. Maybe he and Selina Gane are careful. No.' Simon did this when he was in obsessive mode: disagreed with himself out loud. ‘They're not romantically involved. They can't be. So what's he doing programming her address into his SatNav as “home”?'

‘Why can't they be romantically involved?' Charlie asked.

She watched as Simon realised what he'd said, that he'd sounded a bit too certain. He looked trapped.

‘I'm sorry, did you not want to tell me the whole story now?' she asked. ‘Are you saving the punch-line for week two?'

‘Something strange happened when I was talking to Selina Gane,' Simon said.

‘Even stranger, you mean. The whole thing is strange.'

‘I showed her the photo, and drew a blank. She's not a good
liar – I found that out about ten seconds later – so I'm pretty sure her lack of response to the picture was genuine. Kit Bowskill's face meant nothing to her. Then I put the photo away and asked her if she knew the name. “No,” she said. “Who is she? I've never heard of her.”'

‘Fair enough.' Charlie yawned. ‘Kit could be a woman just as easily as a man.' The heat was having a sedative effect on her. How did anyone manage to work in this climate? If I lived in Spain, I'd have to be a cat, she thought.

‘When I told Selina Gane that Kit Bowskill was a man, something happened to her face,' said Simon.

Charlie couldn't resist. ‘Did you see a mountain in it?'

‘She was surprised – shocked, even. There was this…I don't know how to describe it – this outbreak in her eyes of “No, that can't be right”. I watched her readjust her assumptions. When I asked her about it, she clammed up, but she couldn't have made it more obvious she was lying if she'd tried.'

‘That is strange,' Charlie agreed. ‘So…' For a second, she couldn't get her head round it. No one should have to think so hard on holiday. ‘She didn't know his face, and she didn't know his name. So…' Eventually, her sun-frazzled brain came up with the question it had been fumbling for. ‘So why was she so certain Kit Bowskill was a woman?'

When Sam got back to the CID room, there was no sign of Sellers or Gibbs. Proust wasn't in his office either.

Sam checked his emails. He had seven new ones, five of which looked as if they could safely be ignored; the other two were from DC Ian Grint and Olivia Zailer, Charlie's sister. Sam opened the one from Grint, who'd been trying and failing to get hold
of him. Sam wasn't sure he had the energy to ring him back after his exhausting session with Connie Bowskill; he felt like an unpaid shrink – another meeting like that and he'd need to see a shrink himself. Grint had probably called with a current phone number for the Beaters, the couple who had owned 11 Bentley Grove before Selina Gane; Sam had requested it at one point, thinking he might ask them about the Christmas tree stain on their carpet. He smiled to himself. Grint probably thought he was crazy; Sam wouldn't have blamed him if he did.

The email from Olivia contained a string of confusing instructions, double negatives and veiled non-specific accusations – ‘I'm not saying you should or you shouldn't…', ‘please don't, or rather, only do if you feel you have to…', ‘after I'd mulled it over, I decided I just couldn't not give you the number…', ‘clearly no one else was going to tell you…' – and provided Sam with a means of reaching Simon, which put him in a position he'd have given anything not to be in. Unforgivable to disturb someone on their honeymoon, even with a quick phone call. Which, Sam had to admit, wouldn't be especially quick. There was so much he wanted to ask Simon, and tell him, he wasn't sure he'd know where to begin; the honeymoon would be over by the time he'd filled him in, and Charlie would be marching towards the CID room to bash Sam unconscious with a heavy suitcase.

The phone on his desk started to ring. Sam prayed for it to be Simon: bored, killing time while Charlie had a nap, calling in the hope of a long chat.

It was Ian Grint. He launched in without preamble. ‘Looks like your lady's telling the truth. I've had a woman turn up this morning, saw exactly the same thing. Do you believe in synchronicity? I never have, but I might have to start.'

‘That's…' What was it? Sam didn't know. He wasn't sure what he'd expected to happen, but it certainly wasn't this.

‘Same description,' said Grint. ‘Of the woman and the room. Framed map, coffee table, the works. Woman: slim, petite, green and lilac patterned dress, dark messy hair fanned out around her head, large pool of blood, darker around the stomach. The timings coincide too. They must have pressed the virtual tour button within seconds of each other. Probably the only two people in the country who did, as it was past one in the morning.'

‘Maybe not,' said Sam. ‘Maybe other people are on their way to you – or aren't, because they're not sure how to prove they saw it.'

‘It disappeared from the website almost immediately after the two known sightings, there's no doubt about that,' said Grint. ‘Jackie Napier – that's the lady here – she says she shut the tour down, then started it up again and the body wasn't there. That's exactly what happened to your Mrs Bowskill, right?'

‘It is,' Sam told him.

‘How soon can you and she get down here?' Grint asked.

‘Me and…me and Connie Bowskill?' He'd extricated himself from her barely controlled hysteria less than five minutes ago, and had no desire to seek her out in the near future. She'd ordered a taxi to pick her up, since her husband had taken the car and left her without a means of transport. She was probably long gone by now. As for dropping everything and heading for Cambridge, Sam could imagine Proust's reaction. ‘I'm not sure I can.'

‘Oh, you can, believe me.' Grint's chuckle made it clear that he was unamused. Sam heard the underlying seriousness, the hint of threat. ‘There's quite a bit more to it, and I can't go
into it over the phone – you need to hear it for yourself. We've got a mess on our hands, the like of which you've never seen before. I know I haven't. I need you both here, you and her.'

A few seconds later, Sam was sprinting along the corridor, in case Connie Bowskill was still waiting in the nick car park for a cab that hadn't yet arrived.

 

POLICE EXHIBIT REF: CB13345/432/23IG

I walk out into the heat, stop as the dizziness takes hold. I close my eyes and lean against the police station wall, propping myself up to make sure I don't end up on the ground. A car horn beeps. I can't tell how far away it is. It's probably my taxi. I ought to look, but I know better than to risk it when my mind is breaking up into clumps of woolly grey. I won't open my eyes until I'm certain the world will look normal again. The worst thing about these attacks is the visual distortion. If I keep my eyes open, it's terrifying – like falling further and further back inside my head, being dragged by an internal current away from my eyes, which stay fixed where they are as I recede into the depths.

‘Connie!' The car horn again. I recognise the voice, but can't identify it. I'm still resting against the wall with my eyes closed when I feel a hand on my arm. ‘Connie, are you okay?'

My sister. Fran.

‘Just a bit light-headed,' I manage to say. ‘I'll be all right in a minute. What are you doing here? How did you know…?'

‘I rang Kit when your phone went straight to voicemail. He told me you'd need a lift home.'

Because I made him angry, and he left me stranded.

‘I'm not taking you home yet, though. Get in the car.'

Not taking me home?
Where, then?
I open my eyes. Fran's
Range Rover is parked half in and half out of the disabled space closest to the building. The driver and passenger doors are hanging open. It makes me think of a film I saw when I was little about a magic car that could fly; its doors were its wings.

Fran's wearing the faded jeans and orange and white striped rugby shirt that I think of as her non-work uniform. Sometimes, when I'm at her house and see them drying on the clothes rack, I think about stealing them and throwing them away, though there's nothing particularly wrong with them.

‘I've ordered a cab,' I say. ‘I ought to wait.'

‘Forget the cab. I've called Diane in on her day off to cover for me because I need to talk to you – now. Like it or not, you're coming with me.'

‘Where?'

‘The tea rooms at Silsford Castle. We're going to have a cup of tea and a chat.' Fran sounds grimly determined. Nothing about her tone suggests that any of it will be fun.

I allow her to push me into her car. It smells of a mixture of crisps and Johnson's aloe-scented baby-wipes, which she still uses all the time, even though Benji is five and there is currently no baby in her branch of the family. I'm aware that I have no right to find this irritating. Fran gets in on the driver's side, dumps her bag in my lap and sets off without bothering to fasten her seatbelt.

‘Why Silsford Castle?' I ask. ‘Why not somewhere that's on our way home?'

‘Home? Where's that, then?' Fran turns to look at me, to check her words have shocked me as they were intended to.

‘What?' I snap. A stab of fear makes my gut twist. ‘What do you mean?'

She shakes her head as if to say ‘forget it'. ‘Is your phone still switched off?' she asks.

‘No. I turned it on when I—'

‘Turn it off. Don't ask why, just do it. I don't want any interruptions.'

I obey the order, aware that I probably ought to protest; that would be most people's response. Does it say something bad about me that I find it soothing to be told what to do, so I don't have to think for myself?

Why did Fran ask me where home was?

‘You need to go back to the doctor,' she says as we leave Spilling town centre behind.