of encouraging mad people. If he thinks I’m mad, I wish he’d say it straight out: You’re a nutter, Mrs Bowskill. I told him to call me Connie, but I don’t think he wants to. Since I said it, he hasn’t called me anything.
‘Where is Simon?’ I ask. When I rang his mobile last night, his recorded voice told me that he was unavailable – not for how long, or why – and gave a number to ring in an emergency: Sam K’s number, as it turned out.
‘He’s on his honeymoon.’
‘Oh.’ He didn’t tell me he was getting married. No reason why he would, I suppose. ‘When will he be back?’
‘He’s gone for a fortnight.’
‘I’m sorry I rang you at 2 a.m.,’ I say. ‘I should have waited till the morning, but . . . Kit had gone back to sleep, and I couldn’t just do nothing. I had to tell someone what I’d seen.’
A fortnight. Of course – that’s how long honeymoons are. Mine and Kit’s was even longer: three weeks in Sri Lanka. I remember Mum asking if the third week was ‘strictly necessary’. Kit told her politely but firmly that it was. He’d made all the arrangements and didn’t appreciate her picking holes in the plan. The hotels he chose were so beautiful, I could hardly believe they were real and not something out of a dream. We stayed a week in each. Kit dubbed the last one ‘the Strictly Necessary Hotel’.
Simon Waterhouse is entitled to his honeymoon, just as Kit is entitled to his sleep. Just as Sam K is entitled to deal with my concerns quickly and early, so that he can enjoy the rest of his Saturday. It can’t be the case that everyone I come into contact with lets me down; it must be something I’m doing wrong.
‘He didn’t mention your name in his voicemail message – only the phone number,’ I say. ‘I thought it might be some kind of out-of-hours service, like doctors have.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Really. It made a nice change to get an emergency call that wasn’t from Simon’s mother.’
‘Is she all right?’ I ask. I sense it’s expected of me.
‘That depends on your point of view.’ Sam K smiles. ‘She’s phoned me twice since Simon set off yesterday, crying and saying she needs to speak to him. He warned her that he and Charlie weren’t going to be taking their mobiles, but I don’t think she believed him. And now she doesn’t believe me when I say I don’t know where he is, which I don’t.’
I wonder if the Charlie sharing Simon Waterhouse’s honeymoon is a man or a woman. Not that it makes any difference to anything.
Kit comes in with the tea things and a plate of chocolate biscuits on a wooden tray. ‘Help yourself,’ he says to Sam K. ‘Where are we up to?’ He wants progress, solutions. He wants to hear that this expert has cured his wife of her lunacy during the ten minutes that he was in the kitchen.
Sam K straightens up. ‘I was waiting for you, and then I was going to explain . . .’ He turns from Kit to me. ‘I’m happy to help as much as I can, and I can put you in touch with the right person if you decide to take this further, but . . . it’s not something I can deal with directly. Simon Waterhouse couldn’t deal with it either, even if he wasn’t on his honeymoon, and even if . . .’ He runs out of words, bites his lip.
Even if it weren’t the most far-fetched story I’ve ever heard, and bound to be a load of rubbish. That’s what he stopped himself from saying.
‘If there’s a woman lying injured or dead in a house in Cambridge, then it’s Cambridgeshire Police you need to speak to,’ he says.
‘She wasn’t injured,’ I tell him. ‘She was dead. That amount of blood can’t come out of a person and them not be dead. And I’m willing to speak to whoever I need to – tell me a name and where I can find them, and I will.’
Did Kit sigh, or did I imagine it?
‘All right.’ Having poured himself a cup of tea, Sam K gets out a notebook and a pen. ‘Why don’t we go over a few details? The house in question is 11 Bentley Grove, correct?’
‘11 Bentley Grove, Cambridge. CB2 9AW.’ You see, Kit? I even know the postcode by heart.