The Other Woman’s House (52 page)

Wrong.

I didn't need a brown bottle full of something dissolved in water. I needed Jackie Napier to die.

Obsessed with Gils since Pardoner 2003
. There's only one thing that can mean.

‘The Gilpatricks bought 18 Pardoner Lane, didn't they?' I say. ‘When you…when
we
wanted it.'

I don't need an answer – I can see it in Kit's face.

‘You pretended you didn't want it any more, blamed it on my…problems. You must have loathed the Gilpatricks. And then…what, they moved? They bought 12 Bentley Grove, and…'

Rent out 11, live at Pardoner.

‘Jackie. Jackie bought 18 Pardoner Lane.' I'm still working it out as I say it. ‘You probably gave her some of the money.'

‘How could I do that?' Kit says angrily. ‘I don't have any money that you don't know about.'

‘I was too much of a mess to move away from my family, but that wasn't a problem for you,' I say, thinking aloud. ‘You could live in Cambridge with Jackie. The two of you had been waiting for 18 Pardoner Lane to come up for sale again, but when it did, you didn't want it any more – Jackie did, enough to buy it, but you…'
Yes. It has to be.
‘You wanted whatever
house the Gilpatricks wanted, and that wasn't 18 Pardoner Lane any more – it was 12 Bentley Grove.'

Disjointed ideas clash in my mind. What did Kit say about Jackie waiting in number 12, watching for me, knowing I would come looking?
Soon as the Gilpatricks left in the morning
…So they weren't dead at that point. And if Kit hadn't killed them yet…‘How did Jackie get the keys to this house?' I ask. ‘Was she…?'
Her pink denim jacket, a Lancing Damisz key-ring in the pocket. Her black spider handwriting, on Lancing Damisz paper.
‘She was an estate agent, wasn't she? Did you meet her in 2003? Did she sell this house to the Gilpatricks?'

Kit doesn't answer. He looks away.

‘She did, didn't she? And she kept a copy of the front door key.'

‘We used to meet here, when they were out,' Kit mutters, eyes down. ‘It was a stupid game we played, but it was better than the real life she wanted us to have together. I couldn't bring myself to set foot in the Pardoner Lane house, not once she'd bought it. She wanted me to move in there with her, but how could I? I lived in Little Holling, with you – at Melrose Cottage.' He says it as if I don't know already – as if I'm a stranger he's introducing himself to.
Telling me about his life.
‘I never loved Jackie. The one thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to live with you, wherever I lived but…the game had gone too far by then. And…it was more than a game. I wanted…' He clears his throat. ‘I didn't see why the Gilpatricks should have what I wanted. That was when it all started to go wrong, when they bought our house.'

I wait.

‘Jackie and I had terrible rows,' Kit goes on eventually, so quietly I can barely hear him. ‘I didn't really want this place…'
he gestures around him ‘…but it was easier to pretend I did than admit the truth. Jackie knew it was bullshit – she went on and on at me, telling me the Gilpatricks wouldn't be selling anytime soon, that this was their forever home, trying to get me to admit that I'd stop wanting it anyway as soon as I could have it, even if they did decide to move again. She was furious with me – how could I have let her buy 18 Pardoner Lane if I wasn't planning to live there with her? The rows got worse and worse, and then…' He shakes his head.

This time I can't guess. I have to ask. ‘Then what?'

‘The SatNav thing happened. And Jackie decided it was destiny – the solution to all our problems.'

‘How?
How
, Kit?'

‘Number 11,' he whispers, folding his hands into a tight ball. ‘Everything pointed to it. Eleven was what we called this house – you remember the old joke?'

I bite my lip to stop myself from screaming.

‘There were keys in a bowl in the kitchen with a label on that said “Selina, no. 11”, and after the SatNav disaster, you thought I was shacked up with someone at number 11 – nothing I said could persuade you it wasn't true. One day Jackie asked me if I knew how much bigger number 11's garden was than the garden here.' Kit jerks his head in the direction of the window. ‘I didn't know what she was talking about. She had this strange expression on her face. It scared me. I realised then: she was halfway to being mad.'

‘She'd used the keys from the kitchen and let herself into number 11,' I say.

He nods. ‘She wanted to check out the house where I was supposedly leading my double life. She thought it was hilarious.'

I glance down at the sheet of paper on the floor,
remembering Jackie's words:
Same house, but much bigger garden, southfacing – more desirable – OBVIOUS AND UNDENIABLE – MEANT TO BE!!

‘She thought she'd found the perfect solution.' Kit shrugs. ‘We could buy a house almost identical to the Gilpatricks' but better, on the same street. “You'll be able to lord it over them,” she said. “All we need to do is persuade this Selina woman to sell.” She started talking about putting shit through the letterbox, Nitromosing her car…I didn't even know what Nitromose was. I told her not to be ridiculous – even if we could drive the owner out of her home, we'd never be able to afford a house on Bentley Grove, this one or number 11. I was seconds away from telling Jackie I couldn't go on the way we were when…' He breaks off.

A heavy sense of calm spreads through me, like a drug. I fight the urge to close my eyes. ‘When she explained to you exactly how it could work,' I finish Kit's sentence. ‘If I died at the right time, with the right price on my head, then you could afford it. What was her plan? First, get me out of the way at Nulli. All the stress I was under after finding that address in your SatNav – you were supposed to suggest to me that I stop working for a while, hand everything over to you. And then, what, sell Nulli, with Jackie passing herself off as me to sign the relevant papers? She looked like me, superficially – shoulder length dark hair, slim. With my passport, and a solicitor who'd never met me—'

‘I didn't, though, did I?' Kit snaps. ‘I never suggested you give up work – everything I did from that moment on was to protect you from this…this madwoman I'd got us involved with. You don't have to believe that, but it's the truth.' He lets out a bitter laugh. ‘Jackie accused
me
of being the crazy one.
To her it was so obvious, so simple – we sell Nulli, buy 11 Bentley Grove with a huge mortgage and a whacking great life insurance policy, with her posing as you, then…' Kit covers his face with his hands. Groans.

‘Then kill me, cash in, and get a house worth 1.2 million for two hundred and fifty to four hundred grand, depending on how low Selina Gane was willing to go to get rid of her house quickly,' I say, aware of the uselessness of my words, wishing they were knives. ‘The house where she'd been persecuted by someone she didn't know, for no reason that was anything to do with her. So, what did you say? Did you say, “No, I don't want Connie dead”? Did you say, “I'm going to the police”?'

‘I couldn't go to the police. I…I did my best to stall her by…'

I wait.

Kit changes tack. ‘Anyway, her plan wouldn't have worked,' he says defensively. ‘Who'd have given us a mortgage for that amount once we'd sold Nulli and had nothing?' Is he daring me to call him a liar, or has he forgotten about Melrose Cottage because it suits him to do so? He and Jackie would have got their mortgage – someone would have given it to them, especially if whoever bought Nulli kept Kit on as CEO on some exorbitant salary.

‘I had to pretend to go along with it, pretend we'd do it eventually, once we'd got the details right. Jackie enjoyed the planning. We stopped fighting. Completely. Sometimes I thought – I hoped – that working on the details might keep her happy for ever, that she'd never need to…take it any further.'

‘So your aim was to guarantee Jackie's everlasting happiness?'

‘No! You don't understand,' Kit sobs.

‘I do,' I tell him. ‘I wish I didn't, but I do.'

I watch as he struggles to compose himself.

‘Jackie could and would have ruined my life if I'd said no. I had to give her something to hold on to. I never loved her, Con. She was more like…I don't know, a colleague I felt I had to be loyal to. She loved me, though – I was in no doubt about that. You know she…she cried for nearly two hours after we…did the filming.'

Is he talking about the virtual tour?

‘She insisted on wearing my wedding ring to do it – she wouldn't explain why. Just kept saying it would be funny, but that wasn't the real reason. If it was funny, why did she go to pieces when I asked for it back afterwards? I felt worse taking that ring off her than I did…' His mouth sets in a line, as if to stop the words escaping:
than I did strangling her to death.

‘How bad did you feel about butchering an innocent family? Where does that fit in, on your scale of guilt?'

‘If it'll make you feel any better, I'll tell you something I never told Jackie, not even at the end,' Kit says, ignoring my question. ‘I thought about telling her, but I didn't. It would have been vindictive.'

I wish he'd told her, whatever it is, if it's something that would have hurt her. I wish he wouldn't tell me, but I say nothing to stop him.

‘The address in my SatNav?' he raises his voice, as if afraid I might not hear. ‘I programmed it in.'

‘I know that,' I say, starting to cry at the stupidity of it all – him telling me something that I've been telling him and that he's been denying for six months. ‘I've known all along.'

‘I did it deliberately,' he says. ‘I knew you'd take my car that
day, because of the snow. I
wanted
you to find out, Con. I wanted you to stop me. Why didn't you stop me?'

I didn't kill the Gilpatricks. I didn't kill them. It's not my fault that the Gilpatricks are dead.

I don't know how much time has passed since Kit and I last spoke to one another. There's a hole in my mind and I can't find where it ends. The flies are still buzzing. The smell is worse.

Did I imagine it, or did Kit tell me the rest of the story? He wanted it to stop, all of it. I couldn't stop it for him, so he killed the Gilpatricks – it was their fault he was in the predicament he was in, so they deserved to die. Did Kit say that, or am I imagining what he might have said?

It was easy for Jackie after that – she had him exactly where she wanted him. She could help him escape the four murders he'd committed, but only if he agreed to a fifth. Only if he accepted that I had to die.

Jackie copied the key to number 11, let herself into Selina Gane's house with some prospective buyers, and told a pack of lies about a woman who looked very much like Selina's strange stalker woman putting the house on the market, pretending to be Selina. Maybe she did other things to drive Selina out too – maybe she Nitromosed her car, whatever that means. Whatever she did, she got the result she wanted: number 11 went on the market.

Why the next part, though? I don't have the energy to ask Kit. They must have moved everything out of the lounge at number 12, where the blood was, and replaced it with the contents of number 11's lounge. Risky; someone could have
seen them. They'd have had to move furniture and pictures across the street. But no one did see them, or else they'd have gone to the police. Of course no one saw them; Bentley Grove is the sort of street where people make a point of not noticing – the kind of street that makes a stalker feel entirely comfortable. No one around during the day apart from one very old man who sleeps most of the time.

Jackie had access to the right kind of camera, and to the Lancing Damisz website. Jackie lay down in the Gilpatricks' blood, and she and Kit made an alternative version of the virtual tour for me to see, so that I'd go to the police and talk about blood and murder. I would be hysterical – exactly the sort of person who might, later, suffer an accident that may or may not be suicide. Kit must have done the filming. Was Selina Gane supposed to find out that someone was claiming there had been a murder in her house, the house she was already desperate to get shot of, and lower the price?

When was I supposed to have my accident? Not before Kit and Jackie, posing as me, had bought 11 Bentley Grove. The police wouldn't have had too much trouble working out the chain of events: I'd been obsessed with the Gilpatricks since 2003, when they had bought the house I'd set my heart on. I was so obsessed that I'd persuaded Kit to buy 11 Bentley Grove, directly opposite the Gilpatricks' new house, so that I could spy on them, but it turned out that spying wasn't enough for me – one day I cracked and killed them, all of them. I was so deranged that I killed two young children.