‘The Frenches scurried off home to ring my boss and complain.’ Jackie rolled her eyes. ‘Ungrateful sods – nothing like giving someone the benefit of the doubt, is there? They assumed I’d cocked up. I haven’t spoken to them since. I wouldn’t.’
So, no superior garaging and sunnier gardens for the Frenches, Sam thought, not if Jackie could help it. Hadn’t she described herself as loyal, at the beginning of the interview? In Sam’s experience, people who extolled their own loyalty often sought to impose reciprocity, by coercion if necessary. Almost always, there was an unspoken caveat: but if you cross me, or let me down . . .
‘I was left standing there like a spare part, with Selina Gane threatening to ring the police. I managed to calm her down, at least enough to explain what had happened. She was in a state – who wouldn’t be? So was I, to be honest. I mean, it wasn’t like anything bad had happened to me, but it freaks you out a bit, thinking you’ve been tricked by some weirdo and you don’t even know why. What I don’t get is, what was the point of it all, from the dark-haired woman’s point of view? She must have known what’d happen: I’d turn up to show people round the house, and I’d meet the real Dr Gane. Eventually that was bound to happen, wasn’t it?’
Sam wondered if the point had been to scare Selina Gane out of her senses. To make her think, ‘If my lover’s wife is capable of this, what else might she be capable of?’
‘I don’t suppose Selina Gane said anything about who the dark woman might be?’
‘She wasn’t making much sense. At first when I asked her who’d do a thing like that, she said, “I know who did it.” I waited for her to say more, but she started yapping on about changing the locks. She grabbed the Yellow Pages and started looking up locksmiths, and then she threw the book on the floor, burst into tears and said how could she stay in the house after this? “If she can get a copy of my front door key once, she can do it again,” she said. I told her she ought to contact the police.’
‘She took your advice,’ said Grint. He aimed his next comment at Sam. ‘She made a statement on Thursday 8 July. In it, she said that she was aware of a dark-haired woman who’d been following her – she had no idea who she was, but this woman had been hanging around, behaving oddly. From her statement, there was no way of us working out who this person was, but then . . .’ Grint turned back to Jackie. ‘There have been some developments, recently.’
Grint couldn’t have known about this statement yesterday morning, Sam thought, or else he would have sounded far more interested than he had the first time Sam had spoken to him about 11 Bentley Grove and Connie Bowskill’s disappearing dead woman.
‘I had to ask her,’ said Jackie. ‘I wanted to know who she thought had done it. She said, ‘‘I don’t know who she is.’’ But a few minutes before, she’d said she did know who it was. She mustn’t have wanted to talk about it.’
Grint and Sam exchanged a look. Grint said, ‘I think what she meant was that she suspected the woman who’d been following her was responsible – she knew she had a stalker, but didn’t know the stalker’s identity.’
‘Right,’ said Jackie. ‘Yeah, I suppose so. I didn’t think of that.’
‘So you threw the brochures in the bin, took 11 Bentley Grove off the website . . .’ said Sam.
‘Deleted the photos I’d taken, explained to my boss what had happened.’ Jackie sounded bitter. ‘I got a right bollocking for not checking the passport properly.’ She gave Sam a look that said, I know whose side you’re on. ‘Then, just before I went to New Zealand, I got a call from Dr Gane – the real Dr Gane. I checked.’
Sam wondered how rigorous the checking process had been, over the telephone. Are you really Selina Gane this time? Yes. Oh, okay, great.
‘I recognised her voice,’ Jackie snapped at him.
‘Fair enough,’ Sam said evenly.
‘She rang me because she said I’d been kind and understanding, that day with the Frenches.’ There was an unmistakeable ‘So there’ on Jackie’s face, as if Sam had called her essential goodness into question. ‘She wanted to sell her house, wanted