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.’
‘Let’s hear the hunch,’ said Simon.
Sam looked cornered. He sighed. ‘I didn’t like her at all. She seemed . . . This is going to sound unforgivably snobbish.’
‘I forgive you,’ Charlie told him. ‘Embrace your inner snob – I did, a long time ago.’
‘She seemed stupid. Ignorant, but thinking she knew it all – that was how she came across for most of the interview. The sort of woman who imagines she’s making a brilliant impression when actually everyone listening to her thinks she’s a bigoted idiot. She came out with some classic self-righteous lines: “I live in the real world, not fantasy land”, “No one pays me to worry about murders” – that sort of thing. Quoted herself a lot, too: “I always say”, followed by some pearl of non-wisdom or other.’
Charlie laughed. ‘God, Sam, you’re such a bitch!’
Sam’s face coloured. ‘I’m not enjoying this,’ he said.
‘Go on,’ said Simon.
‘She had fixed ideas about herself, kept telling me what sort of person she was. “Two things about me,” she said, and then she listed them. The first was loyalty – if she was on your side, then she was on your side for ever.’
‘How tedious,’ said Charlie. ‘The people who bang on about their own loyalty are always the first to turn vicious if you send them a birthday card late.’
‘She told me she wasn’t “an imagination sort of person”,’ said Sam. ‘Seemed proud of it, too. She’d just got back from staying with her sister in New Zealand. From what she said, it was clear she’d spent her time there criticising her sister’s life choices and flaunting the superiority of her own – completely insensitive. But then there were times when she seemed to know exactly what I was thinking – sensitive to the point of tele-pathy. She was inconsistent.’
‘Some people are,’ Charlie felt obliged to point out.
‘I know,’ said Sam. ‘That’s what I told myself. But then she said something else, about Selina Gane’s passport photo, something that struck me as . . . wrong. Gut instinct, before I’d had a chance to think about it, even. I knew I’d heard something that jarred as soon as she said it, but I couldn’t work out what it was, not for ages. Then last night it came to me. She was talking about the woman who pretended to be Selina Gane and tried to put 11 Bentley Grove up for sale. “She was clever,” she said. “She knew all she had to do was talk about people not looking like they do in their passports. If she made me think about all those other people, she wouldn’t have to convince me – I’d do all the work myself.” ’
‘So?’ said Charlie. ‘What’s the problem there?’
Simon was nodding, infuriating know-all that he was. He couldn’t possibly understand what Sam was getting at. Could he?
‘Maybe no problem.’ Sam sighed. ‘That’s why I kept quiet about it.’
‘What might or might not be the problem?’ Charlie rephrased her question, rolling her eyes at his annoying humility. ‘I’m not asking you