were having an affair with the woman that lived there? Was it her way of saying, “The game’s up”?’
‘Kit?’ Sam prompts.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know why! I don’t know anything.’ Kit makes a choking sound, covers his mouth with his fist. ‘Look, Connie’s not evil, she’s . . . I love her.’
I can’t help jumping slightly, as the word ‘evil’ joins us in the room. Like a gust of cold air.
‘Shall I take over?’ I say briskly, trying to sound as impartial as I can. The only way to get through this is to be objective. Grint needs to know what Kit and I both think. Then maybe we can make some progress. ‘Kit thinks I murdered a woman. Or maybe I didn’t murder her – maybe it was manslaughter or self-defence, since I’m not evil. Either way, I’m so guilty and traumatised, I try to block it out. I succeed in banishing 11 Bentley Grove and the dead woman from my conscious mind, but my subconscious isn’t so compliant. The guilt erupts, and causes trouble for me. Like Kit says, I’m a mess – that’s definitely true, that’s the one thing we agree on. I programme the address of the house where the murder took place into his SatNav. Maybe, deep down, I want to be caught and punished.’
‘Connie, stop,’ Sam mutters, shifting in his seat. He really shouldn’t work for the police if he can’t cope with tense, unpleasant situations.
I ignore him and continue with my story. ‘When the house comes up for sale, the part of me that knows the truth is terrified that whoever buys it will find evidence of my crime. That’s why I stay up all night looking at it on Roundthehouses, staring at the pictures of every room. The dead woman and the blood are long gone – I’d have made sure to remove all traces – but I’m paranoid, and, in my panic, I imagine I can see the crime scene exactly as it was: the body, the blood—’
‘Hold on a second,’ Grint interrupts. ‘If you’re looking at the house to check there are no traces of the murder you committed, then you haven’t repressed the memory, have you? You know what you’ve done.’
‘No, I don’t,’ I say, impatient because he’s missing the point and it’s so obvious. ‘I only know it subliminally. I’ve blocked it out: the murder, putting the address into the SatNav – everything. As far as I’m aware, Kit must have programmed in the address. But he denies it, so, understandably, I’m suspicious. I start going to Cambridge nearly every Friday, trying to catch him red-handed.’ I flinch as an image of bloodstained hands fills my head. Streaked with red past the wrists, down to the elbows.
‘Are you okay?’ Sam asks me. ‘Would you like some water?’
‘No. I’m fine,’ I lie. ‘One day – the Friday just gone – I see that 11 Bentley Grove has sprouted a ‘‘For Sale’’ sign in its garden. That night, I’m determined to have a nosy at the pictures on a property website, to see if I can spot anything that belongs to Kit in any of the rooms. I find nothing – not a scrap of proof. I almost go to bed feeling reassured: everything’s under control. Up until this point, I’ve successfully repressed my awareness of what I’ve done, but having the pictures of the house there on the screen in front of me is too much – the memory flares up, and I see the . . .’ I stop, swallow. ‘I see the death scene, as clearly as if it were on the website. I don’t realise it’s a mental projection; I believe I’ve seen it on my computer.’
Kit is openly crying now.
‘I’m only saying what I know you’re thinking,’ I tell him.
‘Let me see if I’ve got this right,’ says Grint. ‘You kill a woman, and manage to conceal the memory from yourself, so that most of the time you have no idea you’ve done it. There are only two occasions when your guilty subconscious breaks the surface: once when you programme the address into the SatNav, and then again when you see a dead body that isn’t there on the Roundthehouses website.’
‘That’s what Kit thinks, yes.’
Grint pushes his chair away from the table, leans back. He kicks the heel of one shoe against the toe of the other. ‘So, when you look at 11 Bentley Grove on Roundthehouses, on a superficial level you’re looking for