The Other Woman’s House

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘No,’ said Gibbs flatly. Entertain friends? Debbie’s mates popped round for a cup of tea now and then – did that count as entertaining? Who did Stepford think Gibbs was, Nigella Lawson?

  Colin Sellers slouched in looking worse than he’d looked last week, which Gibbs wouldn’t have believed possible if the evidence hadn’t been looming in front of him. ‘Your hair looks like a furball a cat coughed up,’ he called out. No reaction. He tried again. ‘Some barbers’ll slit your throat for the price of a haircut – solve all your problems in one go.’

  Sellers grunted and headed for his desk. Suki, his girlfriend of many years, had dumped him a fortnight ago. Gibbs had tried to cheer him up at first, pointing out that he still had his wife, Stacey, and at least she’d never found out about the affair, but Sellers wasn’t so easily consoled. ‘I’ve got a gaping girlfriend gap,’ he’d mumbled gloomily. ‘If you want to help, find me a new woman. Can you think of anyone?’ Gibbs couldn’t. ‘Anyone,’ Sellers had repeated, dejectedly. ‘Old, young, flabby, bony, a minger if that’s all you can find – as long as she’s new.’ The idea that there were females in the world that he might never get to have sex with was Sellers’ mobilising grievance.

  Gibbs liked that phrase. It was a useful way of pinning people down in your mind. Stepford was tricky: he didn’t have any grievances, as far as Gibbs knew. The Snowman had too many. Gibbs wondered if there needed to be one that stood out above the rest in order for it to count. Could you have a mobilising cluster of grievances?

  ‘Poor old Colin,’ Stepford muttered. ‘He’s taken it really badly, hasn’t he?’

  ‘How big’s my house?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen it.’

  ‘The house I’ve put up for sale,’ Gibbs clarified.

  ‘Oh, sorry. For one person living alone, it’s big. Four bedrooms, lounge, family room, conservatory, dining room, decent size kitchen. Massive garden.’

  ‘Then I’m used to having the space, aren’t I? I wouldn’t be prepared to live in one room in a hotel for however long my gaff took to sell. I’d get cabin fever.’

  ‘Imagine you’re a woman…’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ said Gibbs, nodding in Sellers’ direction. ‘I don’t want to be mounted by the Fornicator.’

  ‘You’re sentimental. You’re moving because you have to relocate to another part of the country for work, but you love your house. You can’t stand to carry on living in it knowing you’ll be leaving soon – you’d rather move out immediately and…No?’

  Gibbs was shaking his head. ‘I might do it if I hated my house and couldn’t stand to live there any more,’ he said. ‘If I’d lived there for years with a bloke who beat the shit out of me, or if something fucked-up had happened there – my kids had died in a fire, or I’d been burgled and gang-raped…’

  DI Giles Proust stomped past without looking up. When he reached his glass office-cubicle in the far corner of the room, he turned, raised his briefcase in the air and said, ‘Don’t mind me, Gibbs. Continue with your edifying and uplifting conversation, your inspirational Monday morning thought for the day.’ He went in and slammed the door.

  Go fuck yourself, Frosty.

  Stepford was rubbing his forehead, looking worried. ‘I can’t believe I’m in this situation,’ he said. ‘In a minute, a woman called Connie Bowskill’s going to walk in here and very probably tell me a pack of lies, or a mixture of lies and half-truths, and I won’t know if she’s lying or not because I can’t get hold of Simon Waterhouse. I’ve no way of reaching him – can’t be done, simple as that. Whereas if I could speak to him for two minutes – one minute, even – I’d be able to get my bearings.’

  Gibbs knew where Waterhouse was. What he didn’t have was permission to pass that knowledge on.

  The Snowman’s office door opened and he stuck out his bald head. He was still holding his briefcase. ‘Are you expecting a visitor, Sergeant? There was a woman at reception asking for you. Youngish, dark, attractive. Connie Bowler, I think her name was. I avoided her.’

  ‘Connie Bowskill,’ said Stepford. Gibbs heard the reluctance in his voice; no doubt Proust did too.

  ‘I’m good with names, and hers didn’t ring a bell. Who is she?’

  ‘Connie Bowskill?’ Sellers looked up from the Mars bar he was unwrapping. ‘Never heard of her.’

  You’re itching to shag her, though, aren’t you? Sight unseen.

  Stepford shifted from one foot to the other, avoiding Proust’s eye.

  ‘Who is she, Sergeant? A clairvoyant? Your flute teacher? I could stand here guessing all day, or you could make life easier for both of us by answering the question.’

  ‘She’s…someone I’m trying to help. It’s a long story, sir, and about to get longer. It involves a possible murder.’

  ‘So do the staff-training initiatives I devise in my mind every night before falling asleep. If it’s a murder, why don’t I know about it?’

  ‘It’s not our patch.’

  ‘Then what’s she doing here? Why isn’t she in St Anne’s-on-Sea? Why isn’t she in Nether Stowey, Somerset?’

  ‘I haven’t got time to explain, if she’s at reception,’ said Stepford. ‘Let me talk to her and then I’ll put you in the picture.’

  A possible murder. Did that mean Gibbs was duty-bound to tell Stepford where Waterhouse was? Possibly. Probably.

  ‘I already don’t like the sound of it,’ Proust barked. ‘You should try being less helpful, in future – to everyone but me. You’d have shorter stories to tell and fewer pictures to put people in.’ He stepped back into his office and closed the door, but instead of going straight to his desk as he normally did, he stood and stared out through the glass, briefcase in hand, expressionless – like something old and ugly in a museum display cabinet. The man was a freak; he belonged in a nuthouse. Gibbs decided to try and outstare him. After a few seconds he lost interest, and gave up.

  PC Robbie Meakin appeared in the doorway of the CID room. ‘There’s a Mr and Mrs Bowskill waiting for you in the canteen, Sarge.’

  ‘The canteen?’ Stepford sounded disappointed. It was as close to angry as he ever got.

  ‘Best I could do, sorry. All the rooms are taken.’

  ‘You could always book a room down the road, at the Blantyre,’ Gibbs suggested. ‘Talking of hotels.’ Or was he supposed to call it ‘Blantyre’? No, it said ‘The Blantyre Hotel’ on the front. He wondered how many nights at Blue Horizon he and Olivia could afford before all their money ran out. Quite a few, if she sold her two-thousand-quid dress.

  He should ring her before saying anything to Stepford about Waterhouse’s whereabouts; it was only fair to warn her. He had her number; Charlie must have given her his, and she’d texted him last week to say she was looking forward to ‘witnessing’ with him. In retrospect, now that Waterhouse’s wedding was in the past, Gibbs realised he’d been looking forward to it as well. Without something to look forward to, what was the point of anything?

  He decided not to ring Olivia straight away. It could wait an hour or so.

  Where had he gone now? Charlie had assumed, when she’d booked Los Delfines, that it would be exciting and luxurious to live in an enormous house for a fortnight. It was turning out to be more frustrating than anything else. At home, when Simon disappeared and she went to look for him, she always found him within seconds. Here, it wasn’t so easy; the last thing Charlie wanted to do was run round thirty rooms in this heat. ‘Simon?’ she called up the white marble staircase. Was he on the bog? Not for so long, surely – not without taking Moby Dick with him, and she’d just seen it by the pool. He couldn’t be in bed; that was the last place he’d risk being found by her. In the kitchen, preparing lunch? Yesterday Charlie had complained about having to peel the shells off the prawns they’d bought from the supermarket down the road. Maybe Simon had decided to pre-peel them today, to save her the inconvenience. She laughed to herself. As if.

  She adjusted her bikini top, and wa
s heading for the kitchen when something caught her eye: a piece of paper on the sideboard with something written on it in capital letters. Had he gone out, left her a note? No, she’d have seen him while she was baking on her lounger; he’d have had to walk right past her.

  She picked it up. It wasn’t paper; it was Simon’s plane ticket. On it, he’d written, ‘11 BENTLEY GROVE, CAMBRIDGE, CB2 9AW’. Charlie frowned. Whose address was that? Had he wanted her to find it, or was it a reminder to himself about something? Who did he know in Cambridge? No one, as far as she was aware.

  She heard footsteps on the stairs.

  ‘Did you call me?’ Simon asked. ‘I was on the roof terrace, looking at the face in the mountain. You should come up – you’ll see it instantly.’

  Was he still on about that? ‘I don’t care about not seeing the face.’

  ‘I want you to see it,’ Simon insisted. He started back up the stairs.

  ‘What’s 11 Bentley Grove, Cambridge?’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘CB2 9AW.’

  Simon looked confused. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘This.’ Charlie waved the plane ticket at him.

  ‘Let’s have a look.’ He moved closer. Stared at it, then at her. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘Is that your ticket from the aeroplane?’

  ‘No. It’s yours,’ she told him. ‘Mine’s out by the pool – I’ve been using it as a bookmark. You stuffed yours in your pocket when we boarded the plane – I saw you. At some point between Friday night and now, you must have taken it out, written this address on it, and left it there on the sideboard.’ How could he not remember?

  He was shaking his head. ‘No. I didn’t. Did you?’

  ‘Did I?’ Charlie laughed. ‘Well, obviously I didn’t, or I wouldn’t be asking you why you did.’

  Simon looked unconvinced. He looked the way he looked when he was interviewing a suspect, Charlie realised uncomfortably: guarded. Distant. ‘Who lives at 11 Bentley Grove?’ he asked.

  ‘Simon, this is the most insane conversation we’ve ever had – and, let’s face it, there’s stiff competition. I know nothing about that address. You do, because you wrote it down, so why don’t you tell me who lives there?’

  ‘Cambridge. You used to teach at Cambridge.’

  ‘Don’t dare to sound suspicious! Tell me what’s going on, or I’ll—’

  ‘I didn’t write this, Charlie. I don’t know anyone in Cambridge.’ He didn’t look guarded any more; he looked angry. ‘What the fuck’s going on? You heard me coming downstairs and you knew you couldn’t get to it in time to hide it, so you dreamed up some stupid elaborate double bluff – you decided to accuse me of writing it. Clever. But you must know it’s not going to work. I know I didn’t write it, remember? Which only leaves you. Unless you want to bring Domingo into this – maybe he wrote it.’

  ‘Hey, hey!’ Charlie held up her hands. ‘Simon, this is crazy. Calm down, okay? I didn’t write it. Domingo didn’t write it – he can hardly speak English. You wrote it. You must have done.’

  ‘Except that I didn’t.’ The expression on his face chilled her. ‘If something’s going on that I don’t know about, you’re better off telling me now. However bad it is.’

  Charlie burst into tears. She could feel the panic starting to churn in her stomach, goosebumps all over her skin. If you told the truth and weren’t believed by the person who mattered most, what were you supposed to do next? ‘I didn’t write it!’ she shouted in his face. ‘All right, if you say you didn’t either, I believe you – you ought to believe me too.’

  ‘You want me to search the house for intruders with blue-ink pens in their hands?’ Simon asked coldly. ‘Or would I be better off searching your handbag for a blue pen?’

  ‘Search my…?’

  ‘The ink would be a perfect match, I reckon.’

  Oh, God, make this stop. How could Charlie put an end to it, before it spiralled out of control? She did have a blue pen in her bag, and if Simon found it…But she hadn’t done it. And he was just as capable of taking a pen from her bag as she was. If he knew precisely which pen had written those words…No, she couldn’t let herself think like that. They had to trust each other. ‘Domingo must have written it,’ she said. ‘English or no English – he must have…I don’t know, taken a message from someone – maybe from the owners, maybe they’re English. Maybe they live in Cambridge, or they’re staying there or something.’ Was it possible? It had to be, if Simon was telling the truth.

  ‘Find him. Ask him.’

  ‘You find him and fucking ask him,’ Charlie snapped. ‘And if he says it wasn’t him, then he’s fucking lying!’

  ‘You’re shaking,’ said Simon, walking towards her. She steeled herself for another verbal assault, but all he did was pat her arm and…was that a grin on his face? ‘All right, game over,’ he said. ‘I wrote it.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Charlie felt as if she’d been turned to stone.

  ‘I wrote it, and left it there for you to find.’

  Words that made sense. And yet didn’t make sense.

  ‘Are you…experimenting on me?’

  ‘I knew I’d have to spend the rest of the day grovelling, and that’s what I’ll do.’ Simon smiled, proud of himself. He had it all worked out.

  ‘This is something to do with work, isn’t it? It’s our honeymoon, and you’re fucking working! I knew something was on your mind.’

  ‘It’s not exactly work,’ he said. ‘You can tell me later what thoughts are and aren’t permissible on a honeymoon, but I need to ask you while it’s fresh in your mind…’

  ‘It’ll be fresh in my mind in twenty years’ time, Simon.’ Like all the times you’ve hurt me in the past: fresh as a field of daisies, one flower for each wound.

  ‘Did you believe me? That I hadn’t written it? Did you start to wonder if there was any way you might have done it and not remembered?’

  Charlie shuddered; the adrenaline was still coursing round her body. ‘I hate you,’ she said. ‘You scared me.’

  ‘You believed me, but only because you were desperate for me to believe you,’ said Simon. ‘You offered me a deal: reciprocal immunity from doubt. Which might have worked, thanks to Domingo. He’s the only other person here, and he means nothing to us. If he’d said he hadn’t written it, we could have dismissed him as a liar and it wouldn’t have mattered to us, because we have no relationship with him. What if Domingo wasn’t here, though? If you knew you hadn’t done it, and I kept swearing I hadn’t either, what would you have thought? Would you have started to wonder if you were going mad? Would that have been preferable to concluding I was a liar – one you couldn’t force the truth out of?’

  ‘You’d better tell me, right now, what all this is about,’ Charlie said shakily. ‘I’m not spending the rest of our honeymoon—’

  ‘Relax,’ said Simon. ‘I was always going to tell you.’

  ‘Then why not just tell me – at the airport, on the plane? Why drag it out, why torture me? I knew you had something on your mind. You denied it. You are a liar.’ Was she making too big a deal of this? Should she laugh it off?

  Simon was trying to. ‘I thought I’d make you wait a bit,’ he teased her. ‘Build up suspense, get you really interested…’

  ‘I see – so the same principle you apply to our sex life, then?’

  The smile vanished from his face.

  7

  Monday 19 July 2010

  Kit holds my hand under the table as Sam Kombothekra turns the laptop round to face us. I flinch; I don’t want to see that room again. ‘Don’t worry,’ says Sam, as I turn away and lean into Kit. ‘You’re not going to see anything unpleasant – only an ordinary lounge that you’ve seen before, with nothing in it that shouldn’t be there. But I do need you to look. I need to show you something.’

  ‘Do we have to do this here?’ I ask. It doesn’t feel right. Sam should have come to Melrose Cottage again, if this is the best alternative he can offer. We’re
in a canteen the size of a school assembly hall, hemmed in on all sides by the sound of trays clattering, dishwashers whirring, loud conversations on both sides of the serving hatch, as well as across it – two elderly scarecrow-like dinner-ladies, if that’s what they’re called, giggling uncontrollably at a joke made by a young, shiny-faced policeman in uniform. Along one wall there’s a row of arcade-style machines, flashing their lights and bleeping.

  I feel invisible. My throat is already sore from shouting to make myself heard; the combination of the intense heat in here and the sausage and egg smell is making me nauseous.

  ‘Connie?’ Sam says reasonably. Everyone is oh-so-reason-able, apart from me. ‘Look at the picture.’

  Do you want only part of the truth, or do you want all of it? What if it was all or nothing?

  I force myself to look at the laptop’s screen. There it is again: 11 Bentley Grove’s lounge. No dead woman on the floor, no blood. Sam leans over and points to the corner of the room, by the bay window. ‘Do you see that circle, on the carpet?’

  I nod.

  ‘I don’t see it,’ says Kit.

  ‘A very faint brown curved line – almost a circle, but incomplete,’ says Sam. ‘Within it, the carpet’s a slightly different colour – see?’

  ‘The line, yes,’ Kit says. ‘Just. The colour looks the same to me, inside and out.’

  ‘It’s darker inside the ring,’ I say.

  ‘That’s right.’ Sam nods. ‘The mark was made by a Christmas tree.’

  ‘A Christmas tree?’ Is he joking? I wipe sweat from my upper lip.

  Sam lowers the lid of the laptop, looks at me.

  Just say it, whatever it is. Tell me how you’ve managed to prove I’m wrong and mad and stupid.

  ‘Cambridge police have been very cooperative,’ he says. ‘Far more so than I expected. Thanks to their efforts, I hope I’ll be able to allay your concerns.’

  I hear Kit’s relieved sigh. Resentment hardens inside me. How can he do that, before he’s heard anything, as if it’s all over? Any minute now he’ll whip out his BlackBerry and start muttering about having to get back to work.