The Other Woman’s House (53 page)

She kept hassling the police with some made-up story about a dead body on a website – everyone knew it was a lie. There was no evidence of any blood on the carpet – the police checked.

The guilt had driven her mad.

They found her DNA all over number 12, you know. All over the bodies.

‘What?' says Kit, making me jump.

Did I say something?

‘I made it easy for her,' I tell him. ‘Jackie. She didn't have to pretend to be me so that the two of you could buy 11 Bentley Grove – I came up with a plan of my own to buy it.' A chill seeps into my bones as I realise what this means. ‘That's why you killed her, isn't it? Once I'd…Once
we'd
bought the house, she'd have wanted to move on to the next stage.'

I think of what Kit said before:
I killed her to save you
. By insisting on buying 11 Bentley Grove, I was bringing forward my execution date. And signing Jackie's death warrant.

‘When you said you wanted to buy it, you know what went through my mind?' Kit says. ‘“This can't be happening,” I thought. “Jackie never said this would happen.” How pathetic is that?'

‘No one can predict everything, not even Jackie.'

‘No,' he agrees. Listening to us having this conversation, I can't believe we are about to die. Maybe we're not. Kit hasn't touched the knife for a long time. Or at least, I think it's a long time. Perhaps it isn't; perhaps it's just a few minutes.

‘No way she could have known about Mr and Mrs Beater and their Christmas tree,' he says. ‘She got a massive kick out of going to the police and treating them like idiots, saying she'd seen what you'd seen, but it wasn't part of the original plan.'

I don't know what he means.

Kit must be able to see that I'm confused, because he says, ‘The police didn't check out your story like they were supposed to – they didn't see any reason to mention to Selina Gane that
someone was claiming to have seen a picture of a slaughtered woman in her house.'

And so there was no reason for her to lower her asking price from 1.2 million to the nine hundred thousand that Jackie had in mind
.

‘Jackie's colleague Lorraine explained to them that the carpet in number 11's lounge was the same one that had been in when she'd last sold the house – and there was the stain to prove it. That was it, end of story – Grint wasn't going to take it further on your word alone. Once Jackie threw her hat into the ring, he thought again – Christmas tree stain notwithstanding. If two people, entirely unconnected to one another, see the same dead woman on the same website at the same time—'

A shrill ringing sound cuts across Kit's voice. We both jump. I start to shake uncontrollably.
The doorbell. The police
. ‘Hello? Kit? Connie? Are you in there? Open up.'

Not DS Laskey. Simon Waterhouse.

Kit picks up the knife and points it at my throat. The tip presses against my skin. ‘Don't say anything,' he whispers.

‘Mr Bowskill, can you open the door, please?' That's Sam Kombothekra.

‘We're coming in anyway,' Simon Waterhouse yells. ‘You might as well let us in yourself.'

Hearing their voices sharpens my mind. There are still things I don't understand, things I want to understand while Kit and I are alone together. I don't know what's going to happen to either of us, but I know for certain that we won't be in a room together, just the two of us, ever again.

‘Grint asked Jackie if I was the one who pretended to be Selina Gane and put 11 Bentley Grove up for sale.' My words tumble out too fast. ‘She said no.'

‘If she'd said yes, you'd have known she was lying. Grint had no reason to doubt Jackie when she came forward to say she'd seen the body, but if you'd told him she was a liar, he might have taken a closer look at her.'

‘And found the connection to you.' Yes. That makes sense.

‘Bowskill! Open up! Don't do anything stupid. Connie, are you all right in there?'

The knife cuts the bottom of my neck. It makes me realise my lips are still bleeding. I wonder how much blood I've lost. Thinking about it makes me feel weak.

‘What about the dress?' I ask Kit.

‘Dress?' He enunciates the word oddly, as if it doesn't belong in our conversation. He's beyond lying now; I don't think he knows what I'm talking about.

‘My birthday present.'

‘That was nothing. I told you it was nothing,' he says impatiently. ‘I had to buy you a birthday present, and I bought Jackie a present at the same time – I liked that dress, that's all. I bought one for you and one for her.' He sniffs, wipes his nose with the back of his hand. ‘All I wanted was for all this…
shit
to end well – for all three of us. All the shit that wasn't my fault, or yours, or Jackie's. None of us deserved any of this – they're the ones who deserve it.' He jerks his head towards the bed. ‘Do you want to see them? Do you want to see their smug faces?' He takes hold of me, pulls me to my feet.

‘No!' I scream, thinking he's going to show me the bodies. Instead, he drags me down the stairs and into the lounge. There's a lock on the door. Kit slides it across. He puts down the knife, walks over to a cupboard and opens it. He pulls out a photograph, throws it at me. It lands on Jackie, face up.
It
lands on Jackie, dead. Dead Jackie
. A man, a woman, a boy and a girl. On a bridge, eating ice creams. Laughing.

I know the woman's face. Elise Gilpatrick's face. How can I know it? It makes no sense.

What makes sense? Jackie's body lying here like rubbish – does that make sense?

Kit walks slowly towards me, holding the knife in front of him. Where's Simon Waterhouse? Where's Sam? Why can't I hear them any more? I try to send a message to them, knowing it's useless:
Please come. Please
. There's nowhere for me to go, no way of getting away from Kit. He's fire, a tidal wave, a cloud of toxic air – he's everything bad there's ever been, coming for me. He's not looking at me any more; his eyes are on the photograph, on his victims' faces. Nothing is their fault – I know that perfectly well – but they are the reason.

I'm going to be killed because of a family called the Gilpatricks.

There are four of them: mother, father, son and daughter. ‘Elise, Donal, Riordan and Tilly.' Kit tells me their first names, as if I'm keen to dispense with the formalities and get to know them better, when all I want is to run screaming from the room. ‘Riordan's seven,' he says. ‘Tilly's five.'

Shut up
, I want to yell in his face, but I'm too scared to open my mouth. It's as if someone's clamped and locked it; no more words will come out, not ever.

This is it. This is where and how and when and why I'm going to die. At least I understand the why, finally.

Kit's as frightened as I am. More. That's why he keeps talking, because he knows, as all those who wait in terror know, that when silence and fear combine, they form a compound a thousand times more horrifying than the sum of its parts.

‘The Gilpatricks,' he says, tears streaking his face.

I watch the door in the mirror above the fireplace. It looks smaller and further away than it would if I turned and looked at it directly. The mirror is shaped like a fat gravestone: three straight sides and an arch at the top.

‘I didn't believe in them. The name sounded made up.' Kit laughs, chokes on a sob. All of him is shaking, even his voice. ‘Gilpatrick's the sort of name you'd make up if you were inventing a person. Mr Gilpatrick. If only I'd believed in him, none of this would have happened. We'd have been safe. If I'd only…'

He stops, backs away from the locked door. He hears the same footsteps I hear – rushing, a stampede. They're here. The police are finally here. Holding the handle of the knife with both hands, Kit drives it into his chest. The last thing he says is, ‘Sorry'.

 

POLICE EXHIBIT REF: CB13345/432/29IG

I ought to sit down, relax, but I can't. I stand by the lounge window, next to the Christmas tree stain. Waiting. Still twenty minutes before she's due to arrive. When I see a car pull up outside, I assume it can't be her. When a tall redhead with a long, elegant neck gets out of the car, I tell myself she can't be Lorraine Turner, she must be someone else.

I'm wrong. ‘Sorry I'm so early,' she says, shaking my hand.

‘I'm glad you are,' I tell her. ‘Come in.'

She crosses the threshold tentatively, as if afraid she might regret it. ‘I can't pretend to understand,' she says. Giving me the chance to explain if I want to.

I don't. I smile, say nothing.

‘You're absolutely sure you want to sell the house?' she asks.

‘Yes.' She can't question me for too long without seeming rude. Knowing a little of what I've been through, she won't want to upset me.

She makes one last effort to get me to talk. ‘When did you complete on the purchase?' she says. Estate agent language.

‘Yesterday. I rang you straight away.'

She gives up then, goes upstairs to start taking her photographs. The second she's left the room, I regret my reticence. She seems nice, and I need to stop assuming everyone's untrustworthy. Most people aren't Kit Bowskill and Jackie Napier.

Nobody is Kit Bowskill, and nobody is Jackie Napier – not any more.

When Lorraine comes downstairs, perhaps I'll tell her. I'm not ashamed of any of it. I bought 11 Bentley Grove because I promised Selina Gane that I would. How could I let her down, after giving her my word? When I made the promise, I thought I'd be able to live in number 11, because nothing bad had happened there – because it wasn't number 12. Maybe I would have been able to, if things had turned out differently – if I hadn't ended up in that room with the flies and the wrapped bodies, helpless with terror…But after what I went through, I can't live on Bentley Grove. It would be impossible.

So I'm putting my new house up for sale, having bought it only yesterday. And when I sell it, I'll buy a house on a different Cambridge street. I've seen a few things on Roundthehouses that look promising, but I'll wait to see which college I end up at, and maybe try to buy somewhere nearby. Fran rang yesterday and said she'd heard about a Cambridge college that's specifically for mature women students. Her encouragement goes some way towards making up for Mum and Dad's silence on the subject of my belated university education.

11 Bentley Grove isn't all I'm selling. London Allied Capital are in the process of buying Nulli from me, for about half of what it's worth, but the amount of money isn't important – my freedom is all I care about. A new start.

I hear Lorraine moving around upstairs. She'll be down soon. I open the bag I've brought with me.
One more piece of unfinished business to attend to
. I take out the print Kit gave me all those Christmases ago – the laughing girl sitting on the steps of King's College Chapel – and slot it in between the wall and the sofa that Selina Gane didn't take with her. It's a nice
picture, and I can't bring myself to throw it away even though I don't want to keep it. Maybe the house's new owner will find it and be pleased. He or she will see the ‘4/100' on the mount and believe, as I did, that it's a print.

It isn't. Kit took the photo himself. The girl in it is eighteen-year-old Elise Gilpatrick. Or Elise O'Farrell, as she was then, when she and Kit were undergraduates together and she made the fatal mistake of rejecting his advances.

I can't leave her behind the sofa; it feels wrong. I pull the frame out and put it on the mantelpiece, lean it against the wall where Selina Gane's antique map of Cambridgeshire used to hang. That's better.

‘Goodbye, Elise,' I say. ‘I'm so sorry.'

Footsteps on the stairs. Lorraine's on her way down. I get ready to smile and offer her tea or coffee.

•  •  •

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As always, I am profoundly grateful to Peter Straus and Jenny Hewson at Rogers Coleridge & White, and to Carolyn Mays, Francesca Best, Karen Geary, Lucy Zilberkweit, Lucy Hale and everyone at the continuously brilliant Hodder & Stoughton. I thank my lucky stars several times a day that I ended up with all of you – and then I decide it was fate, not luck.