them; Bentley Grove is the sort of street where people make a point of not noticing – the kind of street that makes a stalker feel entirely comfortable. No one around during the day apart from one very old man who sleeps most of the time.
Jackie had access to the right kind of camera, and to the Lancing Damisz website. Jackie lay down in the Gilpatricks’ blood, and she and Kit made an alternative version of the virtual tour for me to see, so that I’d go to the police and talk about blood and murder. I would be hysterical – exactly the sort of person who might, later, suffer an accident that may or may not be suicide. Kit must have done the filming. Was Selina Gane supposed to find out that someone was claiming there had been a murder in her house, the house she was already desperate to get shot of, and lower the price?
When was I supposed to have my accident? Not before Kit and Jackie, posing as me, had bought 11 Bentley Grove. The police wouldn’t have had too much trouble working out the chain of events: I’d been obsessed with the Gilpatricks since 2003, when they had bought the house I’d set my heart on. I was so obsessed that I’d persuaded Kit to buy 11 Bentley Grove, directly opposite the Gilpatricks’ new house, so that I could spy on them, but it turned out that spying wasn’t enough for me – one day I cracked and killed them, all of them. I was so deranged that I killed two young children.
She kept hassling the police with some made-up story about a dead body on a website – everyone knew it was a lie. There was no evidence of any blood on the carpet – the police checked.
The guilt had driven her mad.
They found her DNA all over number 12, you know. All over the bodies.
‘What?’ says Kit, making me jump.
Did I say something?
‘I made it easy for her,’ I tell him. ‘Jackie. She didn’t have to pretend to be me so that the two of you could buy 11 Bentley Grove – I came up with a plan of my own to buy it.’ A chill seeps into my bones as I realise what this means. ‘That’s why you killed her, isn’t it? Once I’d . . . Once we’d bought the house, she’d have wanted to move on to the next stage.’
I think of what Kit said before: I killed her to save you. By insisting on buying 11 Bentley Grove, I was bringing forward my execution date. And signing Jackie’s death warrant.
‘When you said you wanted to buy it, you know what went through my mind?’ Kit says. ‘ “This can’t be happening,” I thought. “Jackie never said this would happen.” How pathetic is that?’
‘No one can predict everything, not even Jackie.’
‘No,’ he agrees. Listening to us having this conversation, I can’t believe we are about to die. Maybe we’re not. Kit hasn’t touched the knife for a long time. Or at least, I think it’s a long time. Perhaps it isn’t; perhaps it’s just a few minutes.
‘No way she could have known about Mr and Mrs Beater and their Christmas tree,’ he says. ‘She got a massive kick out of going to the police and treating them like idiots, saying she’d seen what you’d seen, but it wasn’t part of the original plan.’
I don’t know what he means.
Kit must be able to see that I’m confused, because he says, ‘The police didn’t check out your story like they were supposed to – they didn’t see any reason to mention to Selina Gane that someone was claiming to have seen a picture of a slaughtered woman in her house.’
And so there was no reason for her to lower her asking price from 1.2 million to the nine hundred thousand that Jackie had in mind.
‘Jackie’s colleague Lorraine explained to them that the carpet in number 11’s lounge was the same one that had been in when she’d last sold the house – and there was the stain to prove it. That was it, end of story – Grint wasn’t going to take it further on your word alone. Once Jackie threw her hat into the ring, he thought again – Christmas tree stain notwithstanding. If two people, entirely unconnected to one another, see the same dead woman on the same website at the same time—’