Lasting Damage (49 page)

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.

*

POLICE EXHIBIT REF: CB13345/432/26IG

24 July 2010

Hi Elise

Just realised I haven’t seen you, even in passing, for weeks. Or Donal and the kids, for that matter. And (at the risk of sounding like a nosy neighbour!) your curtains seem to have been closed for a long time, upstairs and down. Is everything okay? Are you in America for the summer? I’m assuming not, since you’ve not asked me to water the plants, etc (unless you’ve found someone else!).

I’m feeling guilty for neglecting you for too long – no excuses, but work’s been frantic and I’ve been having a rough time recently – I’ll tell you about it when I see you.

Anyway, do give us a ring (on mobile, not home) or send a text, and let’s catch up really soon.

Lots of love,

Selina xxx

*

POLICE EXHIBIT REF: CB13345/432/27IG

Where
’
s the lost young man?

Where
’
s the lost young man?

Where
’
s the lost young man?

Where
’
s the lost young man?

Where
’
s the lost young man?

Where
’
s the lost young man?

Where
’
s the lost young man?

Where
’
s the lost young man?

Where
’
s the lost young man?

Where
’
s the lost young man?

Where
’
s the lost young man?

Where
’
s the lost young man?

Where
’
s the lost young man?

Chapter 22

24/7/2010

‘I need you to help me break into a house,’ said Simon, as if it was the most reasonable request in the world.

Charlie nearly lost her grip on the three pints of lager she was carrying; somehow she managed to lower them onto the table without spilling a drop. She, Simon and Sam Kombo-thekra were sitting outside the Granta pub in Cambridge, by the river. Charlie had been waiting for Sam at the Brown Cow in Spilling when Simon’s summons by text message had arrived. She’d had to abandon her drink and tell Sam he wasn’t getting one either, not until he’d sat in a car for two hours.

‘On Bentley Grove,’ Simon helpfully provided more details. ‘Not number 11 – the house opposite Professor Sir Basil Lambert-Wall’s.’

‘Why?’ Sam asked. ‘What’s in there?’

Simon took a sip of his drink, frowned. ‘Dunno,’ he muttered. ‘Maybe nothing.’

‘Well, there’s an irresistible incentive if ever I heard one,’ said Charlie sarcastically.

‘I’ll tell you what I do know,’ said Simon. ‘That’ll be easier. When I left Kit Bowskill’s parents’ house, I broke the speed limit all the way to 18 Pardoner Lane. There was no one in, so I tried number 17. The owners were as pleased to see me as they were last time I turned up unannounced, and today I accepted their offer of a coffee. I figured they’d be the people to ask about number 18 – they’ve lived on Pardoner Lane since 2001, and they’re talkers. Especially her.’

Seeing Sam’s puzzled expression, Charlie explained, ‘He means they’re socially adept human beings who speak and are friendly to people.’ In stark contrast to Simon, who kept his head down when he entered and left the house, and could imagine nothing worse than knowing all the neighbours and having to chat to them when he saw them. Charlie had grilled him about it on numerous occasions. ‘You chat to your colleagues, your mum and dad, me,’ she’d pointed out, aware of the linguistic inaccuracy. What Simon did could hardly be described as chatting. ‘If I talk to the neighbours once, it sets a precedent,’ he’d said. ‘Every time I walk out of my front door, I’ll have to stop on the street and exchange pleasantries – I don’t want to have to do that. When I leave the house, it’s because I’ve got somewhere to go. When I’m on my way home, I want to get home, quickly.’

‘What did Mrs Talker tell you?’ Charlie asked.

‘When she and her husband first moved to Pardoner Lane, number 18 was owned by the Beth Dutton Centre people – the school next door.’

Charlie wondered again about Connie Bowskill getting the address wrong. How could she have remembered every detail about it correctly apart from the house number, especially when Kit had made that joke about using the address as a name for the house?

17 Pardoner Lane, 17 Pardoner Lane, Cambridge
.

But that was wrong, surely. It must have been 18 Pardoner Lane, 18 Pardoner Lane, Cambridge.

‘The headmistress lived at number 18,’ Simon was saying. ‘Short commute to work for her – just next door. Then, in 2003, the school got into financial trouble and they sold number 18 to raise capital. The headmistress now lives in a rented flat on the next street along.’

‘Mrs Talker told you that?’ said Charlie.

‘She and the headmistress belong to the same book group. I asked her if she knew who the house had sold to. She did: a family called the Gilpatricks. She also knew which estate agent had sold it, both in 2003 and last year, when it came up again, because she and her husband nearly put in an offer. Both times, the house was sold by Cambridge Property Shop. Estate agents’ offices are open on Saturdays, so they were my next port of call.’ Simon’s eyes had taken on the glassy, possessed look that Charlie and Sam knew so well. ‘Guess who worked for Cambridge Property Shop in 2003? And in 2009 – she only left to go to a new job in February this year.’

‘Lorraine Turner?’ said Charlie.

‘No,’ Sam said. He normally sounded tentative when he made a suggestion, but not now. ‘It was Jackie Napier, wasn’t it?’

‘What makes you say that?’ Simon asked. Charlie sighed. She was obviously wrong, if he was asking Sam to explain his thinking and not her.

‘I’ve got a bad feeling about her,’ said Sam. He turned to Charlie. ‘That’s why I wanted to talk to you today.’ He had the grace to look contrite, at least. ‘Sorry, I should have told you in the car.’ All the way from Spilling to Cambridge, Charlie had tried to persuade him to tell her what had been so important that it couldn’t wait; Sam had refused to be drawn, claimed he’d misinterpreted something, that it was nothing, really. ‘I figured Simon knew what was going on and he’d tell us when we got here. If it was nothing to do with Jackie Napier, then my hunch was wrong – I suppose I wanted to hold off on bad-mouthing her. I’ve got no proof of anything.’