Pompomberry House (34 page)

Just as I was about to use the remote to end this display of
disgustingness, I noticed something even more vile and retchworthy — Netta
Lewis.

The attention seeking, two-faced, sour runner up of the
Porter and Miller competition, strutted onto the stage. The presenter showed
her to a seat next to Dawn and Montgomery, the people who had almost certainly
murdered her fellow contestant.

“I’m just devastated by the whole situation,” she said,
wiping away non-existent tears. “I just wanna lock myself away and cry, but I
said to myself, ‘No Netta! No! You must go on the show and pay respects to your
dear, dear friend.’”

I looked at the three guests sitting together on the sofa.
Did none of them have
any
shame? I knew I should turn it off, but I felt
compelled to watch, like a spectator at a particularly grizzly road traffic
accident (‘Where’s her head? Oh, I hope I don’t see her head! Oh minced oath!
There’s her head, up a tree! Why did I look for the head?’).

Montgomery droned on. “The book feels like our baby.”

The vision of Dawn and Montgomery’s child popped into my
head once again and I felt even more nauseous. One more assault and I was
actually going to throw up.

“It does,” agreed Dawn. “Me and Monty ...”

“Monty and I,” he corrected.

“
We
had the idea, then we rounded up the writers,
then we helped them with their ideas, and once they’d had a bash, we did all
the editing. So yes, it feels like our baby.”

What?
Dawn and Montgomery did not give us our ideas!
And what did she mean ‘had a bash’ — apart from Danger, we were all
professional, published writers, not newbies having a go at something we’d
never done before. As for editing, it didn’t look as though they’d even run a
spell check on the text.

I was livid. How dare they take credit for the book?
Although, on many levels I wanted to disassociate myself from the pile of crap
that was
The Book of Most Quality Writers
, I wanted that to be
my
decision. I didn’t like having my contribution to the book undermined by these hypocrites.

My phone rang again — still not Gareth’s ringtone, but I
grabbed it anyway. It was Annabel. I looked at the television, then at Annabel’s
avatar glowing on my phone, then back at the television. After careful
assessment, I concluded that talking to one lunatic on the phone was mildly better
than watching three on the television.

“Yes?” I asked, somewhat coolly. Then I wondered whether I
should try to be a little more friendly, so as not to alert her to the fact
that I knew she was in on the plot.

“Dee, it’s me!” she said. Her voice sounded shaky and sharp.

“Yes?”

“Are you watching the telly?”

“Yes,” I said, grimly.

“What the heck are they playing at? It’s our book! Ours!
All six of us!”

“I know.” For a moment I forgot that Annabel was probably planning
to kill me. It was easy when I agreed with her sentiments exactly. “Who the
heck do they think they are?”

“How can they make out that ‘Gnome-man Art More Lovely Than
Thou’ was their idea? I mean, do you remember when I had the idea?”

“Vividly.”

“They’re so controlling! They’re always so controlling!”

“Annabel, did you ring me just to complain about the chat
show?”

“No. there was something else ...” She seemed to be
lost in thought. “Oh, that’s right — Dee, I’m scared!”

“Scared? Why?”

“I think somebody wants to kill me!”

“Why would you think that?”

“It’s Rafe’s story. I think
we’re
the group!” she
cried.

This was interesting. I had similar suspicions. However,
Annabel was one of the conspirators, so surely she knew who the next target
was. If we really were the group that represented the one in Rafe’s story, then
why would she tip me off? Perhaps she was a friend after all. “What makes you
think that?” I asked.

“Because we’re the right size of group, and we met on an
island.”

“That’s because the story was inspired by us. Remember? The
storm, the sense that we were stranded ... That’s what gave Rafe the
idea for the story in the first place.”

“Yes! Exactly like your story. It was inspired by the Porter
and Miller contest, and a Porter and Miller contestant was the eventual victim.
We’re the obvious targets!”

I felt mixed emotions. On the one hand, if we
were
the group, I was in mortal danger, but on the other hand, the fact that Annabel
was sharing this information suggested that I’d got a part of the jigsaw wrong.
Also, while I felt that
I
would be considered the weakest, Annabel felt
that the killer would target her.

“What makes you think that you’re the weakest?” I asked her.

“It’s my work — I just got a terrible review.”

Was she serious? She thought the killer would consider her the
weakest because of one review? Mind you, this whole conspiracy was about
selling books, so perhaps she had a point.

I re-examined my evidence that Annabel was involved. Biff
has said she knew he wasn’t dead. But then Gareth had seen her at a bar on the
night of Amanda’s murder. Perhaps she had been involved in the earlier
incidents and then backed out once murder was involved.

“Had you always planned to go to Green Bar that night?”

“What night?”

“On Friday, the night Amanda Kenwood was killed.”

“I wasn’t at Green Bar that night.”

“Yes, you were, you were seen.”

“I’ve never been to Green Bar. I was at home on my own.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“I was!”

The doorbell rang. I hoped it would be Gareth, even though I
could see fuzzy officer shapes through the frosted glass.

“I have to go,” I told her. I was confused, to say the
least, why would she deny a perfectly good alibi to suggest that she was home
without one?

When I opened the door, I was unsurprised to note that once
again, it was the haughty dismissive skinny cop and his more charming, buxom
sidekick.

“Dee Whittaker?” asked Taylor.

“You know it is. You’ve been here
several
times.”

“Can we come in?”

I showed them in. Taylor seemed grumpier than usual and even
Forrester was a little standoffish. Neither wanted a cup of tea, even though I
informed them that I had a new improved blend of Earl Grey.

Taylor dropped some papers onto the coffee table. At first,
I thought he was just putting his things down, but his purposeful stare told me
that these papers were significant.

“What?” I asked.

“These are bank statements from ‘Gnome Place Like Gnome’,”
explained Taylor.

“Okay ...”

“Would you mind telling us why you bought one hundred garden
gnomes on Wednesday 7
^th
March?”

“I didn’t!”

“Well, we have a bank statement that proves otherwise. That
is
your credit card number?”

“I’ll have to check,” I said, looking for my handbag. I
found it on the floor beside the sofa. “I don’t use my credit cards very often.
I prefer to use my debit ... Oh yes, here it is!”

I handed Taylor the card. He looked at Forrester, and then he
looked at me with the most seriousness anybody has ever used in the context of
a garden gnome purchase.

The news baffled me. I certainly hadn’t purchased one
hundred garden gnomes. I quickly glanced at the badly-painted defecating gnome
in the corner of the room. Why hadn’t I got rid of the monstrosity?

“Would you mind explaining how you knew that Amanda Kenwood
was going to be murdered?”

“Netta! Netta was supposed to die, not Amanda. I’ve told you
that already! Hasn’t
anybody
read my story?”

Taylor and Forrester exchanged grave looks.

I gulped. I realised how things might look from their
perspective. I’d predicted a murder. My credit card had been used to buy
gnomes. The ear of wheat ... The footprints at the farm ...

Once again, I caught sight of the DVDs that Gareth had
returned —
Fight Club
,
Shutter Island
,
The Others
and
Identity.
What
did all of those films have in common?

I let the wallet I was holding fall to the ground. The room
around me started to spin. It was almost incomprehensible. The last two months
of my life flashed before my eyes, only this time I wasn’t watching from the
outside, trying to figure out what was going on. I saw myself hand Ricky Foster
a cheque for ten thousand pounds.

Screeching bananas!

I
had done this. I was the killer.

As hard as it was, I tried to remember, I tried to
understand. Why would I have done this? Had the stress of ending my marriage
turned me to crime? Was it all a big scheme to get Gareth back? I already knew
the answer. I’d started committing crimes to make my husband think that I was
in danger so that he’d come to my side!

My heart pounding in my chest. Facing the terrible truth was
the most horrendous thing I’d ever had to do. I was bombarded by images of
breaking into Amanda’s flat, killing her, carrying her to Waterloo Bridge ... 
I
should turn myself in
. No, don’t turn yourself in!

“Are you all right, Mrs Whittaker?” asked Forrester.

At first, the awareness of somebody else in the room made me
jump, but then I remembered where I was, and who I was with. More importantly,
I recognised the improbable nature of my investigating a mystery for many
weeks, only to discover that I was the perpetrator. Of course I wasn’t the
copycat. Clearly, I was overtired and had been reading too many books again.

“Yes, sorry,” I said, hazily. “I was daydreaming. It’s
difficult being a writer; sometimes your imagination runs away with you.”

“Daydreaming?” scoffed Taylor. “You do realise how much
trouble you could be in?”

“It wasn’t me,” I said. “But I think I know who did do it.”

And so I told the police officers that Biff was alive, and
explained Gareth’s theory about Dawn and Montgomery hiring Biff to test us.

“Did you notice your credit card going missing at any point?”
asked Forrester.

“No,” I said, thinking about it. “But I don’t use it very
often. It could disappear for weeks and I wouldn’t notice.”

“Is there anybody who might have had the opportunity to
remove it and put it back again?”

“No, not that I can think of. I always keep my handbag close
to me.”

About an hour later, the police appeared to be wrapping
things up for the day. However, they informed me that they would almost
certainly be back, which I didn’t doubt for one second. Taylor and Forrester
seemed to be on a piece of elastic tied to my front door.

I contemplated telling them about Rafe’s story, and my fear
of being eaten. However, I decided not to share that part of the story. As
things stood, I felt that they had started to take me seriously and I didn’t
want to spoil it. No matter how strong my fear of being devoured, I realised it
would sound ludicrous to a cynic like Taylor.

By the time they left, I felt as though I’d been flattened
by a steamroller. All I wanted was to be held by Gareth, but Gareth was gone
and I was all alone, waiting to be eaten.

 Chapter 19

As time passed, I found that my predicament spun around my
brain like a jigsaw in a blender. Gareth’s theory that the copycat was all five
writers made sense. If the killer wasn’t a collaboration of people, then the
police would be looking for a particularly specific culprit — somebody tall,
who smoked spliffs, owned a dog costume, had access to my wallet, had no alibi
for Amanda’s murder and who had something to gain from the whole saga. It
seemed unlikely that one person would fit the bill — but multiple people,
working together, might just tick all the boxes.

Still, even if the police managed to catch all five of them,
it wouldn’t fix my marriage. How was it that Gareth and I could solve a murder
together, yet fail to master being married?

I couldn’t stand it any longer. I leapt off the sofa. I had
to see him. I couldn’t leave things like this, with him thinking I was a whore,
without him knowing how devoted I was to our marriage.

Owing to my fear of imminent ingestion, I had vowed to stay
indoors, at least until the police had rounded up the writers. However, that
might take hours — days even. I could not wait that long.

Obviously, I tried calling Gareth, but he rejected my calls,
sometimes before the first ring had even had a chance to sound. There was no
way that he would agree to come back, so I had to go to him.

He was probably at Barry’s. That would be the sensible first
place to look. Then, if he wasn’t there, I could consider other places like
Green Bar or his mother’s. I wouldn’t stop until I’d got my husband back.

I grabbed the nearest hat I could find and hurried into the
garden, letting the door slam behind me without even checking to see whether or
not I had my keys. The next time I needed to get through that door, I would
have my husband by my side.

It was warm for March, but was March nevertheless. The cold
breeze chilled my legs, but I didn’t care. Stopping to find a pair of tights
would have meant two more minutes without Gareth. The heartbreak was more
painful than leg freeze.

I hurried down the street. I would have to take the tube to
get to Barry’s. I hoped I had my wallet, but if not, I would beg until I had
enough change to buy a ticket.

I was vaguely aware that a vehicle had pulled up beside me
but was too concentrated on my goal to pay it much attention. Suddenly, a tall,
masked figure climbed out. My eyes barely had time to focus before the figure
grabbed me, and threw me roughly into the back of the vehicle.

I wanted to scream but a leather-gloved hand covered my
mouth. It was large, definitely a man’s hand. He threw me violently into the
back seat.