bathroom windowsill while she was in the bath. She was addicted to looking at her photos of Los Delfines.
‘Independent,’ said Simon. ‘Interesting choice of word.’
‘Sorry?’ Charlie was staring at a tiny sweaty Domingo, leaning against the trunk of the upside-down lily tree.
‘Two people see the dead woman’s body on Roundthehouses: Connie Bowskill and Jackie Napier. No one else. Does it seem likely to you that the only two people to see this dead body on the website – for the brief half hour that it’s up there, before it’s replaced – happen to be these two people? Think of all the millions that might have seen it.’
‘Likely?’ Charlie made a ‘silent scream’ face. ‘Simon, we left likely behind several light years ago. None of this is likely. I still think it’s some kind of . . . bizarre practical joke. There’s absolutely no evidence – proper evidence, I’m talking about – that anyone’s been killed, hurt, anything. Oh, my God!’
‘What? What’s wrong?’
‘It’s hideous. It’s fucking hideous!’
‘What is?’
‘The face! In the mountain. It’s so obvious now that I can see it: eyes, nose, mouth.’ Charlie pressed the zoom button on her camera. ‘I asked you if it was attractive – why didn’t you tell me it was a complete minger? It looks like Jabba the Hut from Star Wars.’
‘What do you mean, you can see it?’ Simon sounded irritated. ‘You’re at home.’
‘On my camera.’
‘There’s no way a photograph could—’
‘It’s that panoramic one, the one I took from the top terrace. Pool, barbecue, gardens, mountain – complete with ugly face.’
‘The face I saw wouldn’t show up in a photograph,’ said Simon.
‘Simon, I’m looking at a face here. How many faces can one mountain have?’
‘You can’t tell anything from a picture,’ he said curtly.
‘Did the face you saw look like Jabba the Hut from Star Wars?’
There was a pause. Then Simon said, ‘If you didn’t see it first-hand, you can’t claim to have seen it – not on the basis of a tiny photo.’
‘To whom can I not claim that?’ Charlie teased him. ‘The Board of Mountain Face Classification? What does it matter if I see it too? Does it make you less special?’
‘No.’ He sounded confused by her question. ‘I wanted you to see it, but you didn’t. Seeing it in a photograph’s not the same.’
‘No, it’s different. But I can still see it.’
‘Not in the mountain.’
Charlie held the phone at a distance and blew a raspberry into it – a long, loud one. When she put it next to her ear again, Simon was talking so quickly that she couldn’t follow what he was saying. Something about someone called Basil. ‘Slow down,’ she told him. ‘I missed the beginning of that. Start again.’
‘Basil Lambert-Wall,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Professor Sir, the one who lives on Bentley Grove, Selina Gane’s next-door neighbour. He said he’d seen Kit Bowskill before, remember, when I showed him a photo? Said Bowskill had fitted a burglar alarm for him?’
Charlie remembered. ‘And then you went to the burglar alarm company, who said they didn’t recognise Bowskill and he didn’t work there.’
‘You tell me you’ve seen a face in a mountain when you haven’t – you’ve seen it in a photograph.’ Simon’s words collided with one another, as they always did when he was excited. ‘Why do you make that mistake? Because you associate the photograph with the mountain – it’s such a strong association in your mind that you confuse the one with the other.’
Charlie opened her mouth to protest, but it was clear he wasn’t stopping.
‘Basil Lambert-Wall was wrong about Bowskill being the guy that fitted his burglar alarm – we know that. But what if he was right about seeing him? What if seeing Kit Bowskill is strongly associated in his mind with the day he got a new burglar alarm? What if something else happened that same day, and the professor’s confusing the two things? Think about it – it’s got to be! Why else would he be so sure Kit Bowskill had fitted his alarm when he hadn’t?’
Because he’s old and doddery and just plain wrong? Charlie didn’t bother to say it out loud. When Simon was like this, there was no point talking to him.
She heard a click, then the line went dead. Dismissed. It was Professor Sir Basil’s turn to have his evening interrupted, poor old sod. It struck Charlie as odd that she knew what was about to happen to him and he had no idea. She hoped he wasn’t asleep.