The Other Woman’s House (45 page)

‘And then I'll come back, and I'd like you to tell me that story – everything you've just told me – again.'

‘But that's a waste of time! Why do you want to hear it again? Weren't you listening?'

‘I listened very carefully indeed. I don't think I've ever heard anything quite so…unusual. We police don't hear that many unusual stories – far fewer than you might think. Normally the stories surrounding the crimes we deal with are very dull.'

I see what she's driving at. ‘You think I invented the whole thing, don't you? You want to hear the story again so that you can check I don't slip up and change some of the details.'

‘Do you have an objection to telling me again?' Laskey asks.

Yes. It's a waste of time
. I force myself to subdue my anger. ‘No,' I say, then can't resist adding, ‘As long as you're aware of the flaw in your logic.'

‘What's that?'

‘If I tell you again and my story doesn't change, you're no further forward. I might be telling the truth, or I might be a liar with a brilliant memory.'

She smiles. ‘Whichever you are, you need something to eat. Your stomach's been rumbling for the last fifteen minutes. Wait here.'

At the door, she stops, turns back. ‘Stealing a set of keys from someone's house is a crime, by the way. If you're planning on changing any part of your story, that's the bit I'd start with.' Still smiling, she leaves the room.

What does she mean? Is she suggesting I lie to avoid trouble? Or giving me notice that, after the food she's forcing on me, I'm going to be arrested? It didn't occur to me not to tell her that I took the keys from the mug in Selina Gane's kitchen. How can she care about that, after what I've just told her?

Because she doesn't believe you about the dead woman and never will. She probably doesn't believe you about stealing the keys either, or she'd have arrested you already
.

I had to take those keys. Didn't I? What if I'm wrong, and they don't belong to Selina Gane's American friend? What if the number on the label doesn't mean what I think it means? Maybe it's a different street. The label didn't say Bentley Grove, or a name, just the house number.

No. You're not wrong
.

When she talked about her American friend, Selina Gane looked straight at that mug. The keys are to the friend's house – they must be. And the number with no street name, that has to mean Bentley Grove – you'd only do that with your own street.

And the houses on Bentley Grove are more or less identical. The lounges are more or less identical…

Suddenly, the thought of staying here a moment longer, to be patronised and subtly threatened, makes me feel ill. I don't need this kind of help. I've got a better idea, one that doesn't involve trying to ingratiate myself with Alison Laskey.

I grab my bag and make my way out of the building as quickly as I can, then walk until I come to a phone box. Pressing the buttons, I wonder if I will always remember Kit's mobile number, even in ten or twenty years.

He answers on the second ring. ‘It's me,' I tell him.

‘Connie.' He sounds pleased to hear from me. His voice is thick, swollen. Has he been crying? He never used to cry. Maybe he does it all the time, now that he's got the knack. ‘Where are you?'

‘Where I am now is irrelevant. It's where I'm going to be in twenty minutes that matters. I'm going to be at 11 Bentley Grove.'

‘What are you…?'

‘You know where I mean, don't you, Kit?' I talk over him. ‘11 Bentley Grove, not Selina Gane's house. That's where I'm going to be.
Your
11 Bentley Grove.'

Silence from Kit.

‘I've got a set of keys in my hand,' I tell him. ‘I'm looking at them now.'

I put the phone down, leave the booth, panic as I try to
remember where I left my car. That's right: the multi-storey car park next to the glass-fronted swimming pool with the tube-like slides.

I move as fast as I can, knowing that Kit, wherever he was when I spoke to him, will now be making his way to the house. I couldn't explain to someone like Alison Laskey how I know this, but I do. When you've been with someone for as long as I've been with Kit, you can predict a lot of their behaviour.

I have to get there before he does. I need to let myself in and see it for myself, whatever it is. However bad it is.

What are you going to do when Kit turns up? Kill him? Say ‘I told you so'?

It doesn't seem to matter what happens next. All that matters is what I'm doing now – trying to get to the house, so that I can put the key in the lock and turn it. See that it works. That's all I want out of this: the relief of proving to myself, finally that I'm not mad or paranoid. I can't think beyond that.

Every traffic light is on red. I ignore a few of them and drive straight through. Others I obey. There's no system behind my actions; my driving's worse than it's ever been, all my decisions entirely random. Lots of disconnected thoughts flash in my mind: the blue and pink hourglass dress Kit bought me, Mum's tapestry of Melrose Cottage on my bedroom wall at home, Alison Laskey's worm-lipped smile, 11 Bentley Grove's floorplan, Nulli's certificate of incorporation in its smashed glass frame, iron railings, Pardoner Lane, the Beth Dutton Centre, the rotting cabbage Mum found in the cupboard under the stairs, the yellow key fob in my pocket, red feathers on the mug in Selina Gane's kitchen, her map of Cambridgeshire with the empty crest.
Empty Crest Syndrome
, I think, and laugh out loud.

I pull up outside the house and look at the clock on the dashboard. The journey from the multi-storey car park to here took ten minutes. It felt more like ten hours.

The key works because I don't waste time wondering if it will or won't. Of course it works. That's the part I forgot to mention to Alison Laskey: how absolutely certain I am that I'm right.

I push open the front door and walk in. The smell makes me gag: human waste. And something even worse underneath it, like an undertone.
Death
. I've never smelled it before, but I recognise it instantly.

This is
real
.

Something inside me is screaming that I should run, get out, as far away as I can. I see several things at once: the white button stuck to the top of the newel post, a telephone on a table in the hall, by the stairs, lots of blood-dotted papers scattered on the floor beneath the table, a pink denim jacket lying just inside the front door. I reach to pick it up, feel the pockets. One is empty. The other has two keys in it – one on a Lancing Damisz key-ring, the other with a paper tag attached to it, the sort you might stick on a gift. On the tag, someone has written ‘Selina, no. 11'.

My mind reels as I struggle to make sense of this. Then I see that there's no mystery; it's pitifully simple: you give someone your spare key, they give you theirs. If you lock yourself out, you're covered.

Ring the police. Pick up the phone and ring 999
.

Focusing on every move my body makes, I put one foot in front of the other and start to walk across the hall, keeping my eyes fixed on the end point. Twelve steps to that phone, no more. I stop when I reach an open door, aware of something in my peripheral vision, something large and red. My head is
too heavy to turn and my neck too stiff. Slowly, I realign my whole body so that I'm facing the lounge.

I'm looking at my sea of blood. Mine and Jackie Napier's, I suppose I should say, since she and I were the only ones who saw it. It's darker now, dry, like crusty paint. In the centre, there's a woman lying on her front with her head to one side, facing away from me. The position of her head isn't the only thing that's different. Her hair is neater than in the photograph I saw on Roundthehouses. Almost too neat, as if someone has brushed it while she's been lying there. And she isn't wearing the green and lilac hourglass dress, she's wearing a sleeveless pink top, a skirt with a white and pink print, pink lace-up pumps.
The pink jacket in the hall must be hers too
. Lying by her side, as if it dropped from her shoulder before she fell, is a colourful flower-print canvas handbag.

No wedding ring on her left hand.

Terror jolts through me. I don't know what to do. Ring the police? Check to see if she's still alive?

Get out of the house
.

But I can't. I can't just leave her here.

I don't know how long I stand there – it could be half a second, ten seconds, ten minutes. Eventually, I force myself to walk into the room. If I walk around the edge of the blood, over to the window, I'll be able to see her face.
If I walk around the edge of the blood. If I walk around the edge. Walk. Around the edge
. It's only by repeating it to myself that I'm able to do it.

When I see who it is that's lying there, I have to press both my hands over my mouth so hard that it hurts. My arms are shaking – all of me is shaking. It's Jackie, Jackie Napier. She's dead. Eyes staring, full of fear. Marks around her throat. Strangled.
Oh, my God, please let this not be happening
.

Her face is twisted, especially her mouth. The tip of her tongue is visible between her lips. I hear myself saying no, over and over.

Jackie Napier. The only other person who saw what you saw
.

I drag myself towards her, as close as I can bear to go. Bending down, I touch her leg.
Warm
.

Shuddering, I back out of the room. The phone.
Ring the police
. That's it. That's what I do next: ring the police. I focus on my destination, start to make my way across the hall. As I get closer to the table with the phone on it, I see something that makes me seize up: my husband's handwriting, on one of the blood-splattered pieces of paper on the floor.

I sink to my knees, unable to stay upright. What I'm looking at makes no sense to me. It's a poem by someone called Tilly Gilpatrick, about a volcano. There's a comment beneath it, praising the poem. Underneath the praise, Kit has written that the poem is appalling, even for a five-year-old, and added a poem that he thinks is better: three rhyming verses. I try to read them, but can't concentrate.

One by one, I pick up the other scattered pieces of paper. All of them are dotted with red. There's a shopping list – someone calling themselves ‘E' asking ‘D' to buy, among other things, chargrilled artichokes, not a tin of artichokes. The ‘not' is in capital letters. What else is here? A car insurance certificate. I notice the name Gilpatrick again; the named drivers are Elise and Donal Gilpatrick.

E and D.

A letter thanking Elise, Donal, Riordan and Tilly for a lovely weekend; an ancient-looking and angry letter from Elise to someone called Caroline, dated 1993; a poem by Riordan Gilpatrick about conkers; the same Riordan's school report;
a description of some kittens by Tilly. I push all these to one side, and find myself staring at a small blue note from Selina Gane to Elise, dated 24 July.
Today
. Did she write it just after I left? There's no blood on this one. As I read it, I'm aware of a numbness behind my eyes. I have to stop looking.

Who are these people, the Gilpatricks? What do they have to do with Kit?

Somehow, I manage to get myself upright again. I pick up the phone, then notice another piece of paper beside it, on the table. Kit's handwriting again, but just one line this time, repeated over and over. The ink is blurred where drops of water appear to have landed on it, as if it's been left out in the rain.

As if the writer was crying when he wrote it
.

The words look familiar. Is it a line from the poem, the one Kit wrote beneath five-year-old Tilly's volcano poem? I bend down, look for the relevant piece of paper. Here it is.
Yes
. But why did Kit choose to write this particular line thirteen times? What does it mean? And who wrote the poem? Not Kit; he doesn't write poems, though he often quotes them – always ones that rhyme, by people I haven't heard of who have been dead for years.

I pick up the phone again, try to put it to my ear, and find I can't move my arm. There's a hand around my wrist, pulling it back. I drop the phone as metal flashes in front of my face, glinting in the sunlight flooding in through the hall window.
A knife
. ‘Don't kill me,' I say automatically.

‘You say it like I want to. I don't want to.' A voice I used to love; my husband's voice. The blade is flat against my throat, crushing my windpipe.

‘Why?' I manage to say. ‘Why are you going to kill me?'

‘Because you know me,' Kit says.

 

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