This Body of Death

Chapter Sixteen

BARBARA HAVERS DID THE TELEPHONE WORK AND WINSTON Nkata did the route planning. Without much difficulty, she was able to track down Jonas Bligh and Keating Crawford, the two instructors at Winchester Technical College II-no one was shedding any light on whether there was actually a Winchester Technical College I-and both of these individuals agreed to speak to the Scotland Yard detectives. Both of them also asked what the coming visit from Scotland Yard was about. When she said it was about a bloke called Gordon Jossie for whom a letter of reference had been written, the response of “Who?” was identical.

Barbara repeated Jossie’s name. This would have been eleven years ago, she told them.

Again they were virtual echoes in reply. Eleven years? One could hardly be expected to remember a student from such a long time ago, Sergeant. But each went on to assure her he would be waiting for the detectives to show up.

Meanwhile, Nkata was studying the map to get them up to Winchester, into Winchester, and in the general environs of the college. He was growing less and less happy about being in Hampshire, and Barbara couldn’t blame him. He was the only black person she herself had seen since they’d entered the New Forest, and from the reaction of everyone they’d come into contact with at the hotel in Sway, he appeared to be the first black man they’d ever encountered other than on the telly.

She’d said to him sotto voce at dinner on the previous evening, “First, it’s that people think we’re a couple, Winnie,” to excuse the obvious curiosity of their server.

He said, “Yeah?” and she could sense him bristling. “So wha’ if we are? Something wrong with mixed couples? Something wrong with that?”

“’Course not,” Barbara said at once. “Bloody hell, Winnie. I should be so lucky. And that’s why they’re staring. Him and her? they’re thinking. How’d she score that bloke? Definitely not on her looks, by God. Have a look at the two of us-you and me-having dinner in a hotel. The candlelight, the flowers on the table, the music playing-”

“It’s a CD, Barb.”

“Bear with me, okay? People jump to conclusions based on what they see. You can believe me. I get it all the time when I’m with DI Lynley.”

He seemed to think about this. The hotel dining room was moderately special, even if the music did indeed come from a CD playing old Neil Diamond hits and the flowers on the table were plastic. It remained the only establishment in Sway where one could have anything remotely resembling a romantic evening. Still, he said, “Second?” to which she said, “Huh?”

“You said first. What’s second?”

She said, “Oh. Second, it’s just that you’re tall and you’ve got that scar on your face. Makes you look a type. And then there’s the way you dress contrasted with the way I dress. They also might be thinking you’re ‘someone’ and I’m your secretary or assistant or whatever. Probably a footballer. That would be you, not me. Or maybe a film star. I reckon they’re trying to decide where they saw you last: Big Brother, some game show, maybe on Morse when you were still in nappies.”

He gazed at her, looking mildly amused. He said, “You do this with Inspector Lynley, Barb?”

“Do what?”

“Worry so much. ’Bout him, I mean. Like you’re doing with me.”

She could feel herself colouring. “Was I? I mean, am I? Sorry. Just that-”

“Nice of you,” he told her. “But I been stared at worse’n here, believe me.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well.”

“And,” he added, “you don’t dress half bad, Barb.”

To which she guffawed. “Right. And Jesus didn’t die on the cross. But it’s no matter. Superintendent Ardery is seeing about that. Soon, believe me, I’ll be the Met’s answer to…” She pulled at her lip. “See, that’s the problem. I don’t even know the latest fashion icon. That’s how far out of the loop I am. Well, whatever. It can’t be helped. But life was easier when emulating the dress sense of the Queen was good enough, let me tell you.” Not that she herself had ever emulated the Queen’s dress sense, Barbara thought. Although she did wonder if sensible shoes, gloves, and a handbag looped over her arm would satisfy Superintendent Ardery.

Winchester being a city and not a village, Winston Nkata was not marked for special observation there. Nor was he much noted on the campus of Winchester Technical College II, which they found easily as a result of his advanced planning. Jonas Bligh and Keating Crawford proved to be more challenging, however. Expecting to find them in a department somehow related to thatching, Barbara had neglected to ask their whereabouts. It turned out that Bligh was involved with computers in some arcane fashion while Crawford dealt with telecommunications.

Bligh was “having his surgery hours,” they were told, and they found his office tucked beneath a stairway up and down which, during their initial conversation with him, herds of students pounded incessantly. Barbara couldn’t imagine anyone actually accomplishing anything in this environment, but when they introduced themselves to Bligh, the wax earplugs he removed from his ears explained how he managed to cope with the place. He suggested they get out of there, go for a coffee, have a walk, whatever. Barbara countersuggested that they track down Crawford, a plan that she hoped would save them some time.

That was managed by way of mobile phone, and they met the telecommunications instructor in the car park where a caravan selling ice cream and juice was attracting a crowd. Crawford was one of them. Heavy was a sympathetic way to describe him. He certainly didn’t need the Cornetto he was attacking. He finished it and immediately purchased another, calling over his shoulder, “You lot want one?” to the detectives and to his colleague.

Fully capable of seeing her future when her feet were held to the flames, Barbara demurred. Winston did likewise. So did Bligh, who muttered, “Dead before he’s fifty, just you wait,” although he said pleasantly, “Don’t blame you,” to Crawford in reference to the second Cornetto. “Damned hot summer, eh?”

They went through the usual prefatory conversational motions that were peculiar to the English: a brief discussion of the weather. They strolled to a patch of browning lawn that was shaded by a sturdy sycamore. There were no benches or chairs here, but it was a relief to get out of the sun.

Barbara handed each of the men the letter of reference he’d written for Gordon Jossie. Bligh put on a pair of spectacles; Crawford dropped a dollop of vanilla ice cream on the sheet. He wiped it off on his trouser leg, said, “Sorry, occupational hazard,” and began to read. In a moment, he frowned and said, “What the hell…?” and Bligh simultaneously shook his head. They spoke nearly in unison.

“This is bogus,” Bligh said as Crawford declared, “I didn’t write this.”

Barbara and Winston exchanged a glance. “Are you sure?” she asked the instructors. “Could you have forgotten? I mean, you must be asked to write a lot of letters at the end of students’ course work, right?”

“Naturally,” Bligh agreed. His voice was dry. “But I’m generally asked to write letters in my own field, Sergeant. This is college letterhead, I’ll give you that, but the letter itself deals with Gordon Jossie’s accomplishments in Accounts and Finance, which I don’t teach. And that’s not my signature.”

“You?” Barbara said to Crawford. “I take it…?”

He nodded. “Large appliance repair,” he said, indicating the contents of the letter by extending it to her. “Not my bailiwick. Not even close.”

“What about the signature?”

“Same thing, I’m afraid. Someone likely nicked letterhead from an office-or even designed it on their computer, I suppose, if they had an example in front of them-and then wrote their own recommendations. It happens sometimes, although you’d think this bloke would have checked first to see who taught what. Looks to me like he gave a quick glance at a list of the staff and chose our names at random.”

“Exactly,” Bligh said.

Barbara looked at Winston. “It explains how someone who can’t read or write managed to ‘complete’ course work at the college, eh?”

Winston nodded. “But not how someone who can’t read or write wrote these letters, cos he didn’t.”

“That looks like the case.”

Which meant, of course, that someone else had written them for Gordon Jossie, someone who knew him from years gone by, someone they likely hadn’t spoken to yet.

ROBBIE HASTINGS KNEW that if he was going to get to the bottom of what had happened to his sister and why, and if he was going to be able to go on living-no matter how bleakly-he had to begin looking squarely at a few basic truths. Meredith had been attempting to tell him at least one of those truths in the church in Ringwood. He’d stopped her abruptly because he was, quite simply, a bloody coward. But he knew he couldn’t go on that way. So he finally picked up the phone.

She said, “How are you?” when she heard his voice. “I mean, how are you doing, Rob? How are you coping? I can’t sleep or eat. Can you? Have you? I just want to do-”

“Merry.” He cleared his throat. Part of him was shouting better not to know, better never to know and part of him was trying to ignore those cries. “What did…In the church when you and I were talking about her…What did you mean?”

“When?”

“You said whenever. That was the word you used.”

“I did? Rob, I don’t know-”

“With a bloke, you said. Whenever she was with a bloke.” God, he thought, don’t make me say more.

“Oh.” Meredith’s voice was small. “Jemima and sex, you mean.”

He whispered it. “Aye.”

“Oh, Rob. I s’pose I shouldn’t actually have said that.”

“But you did, didn’t you. So you need to tell me. If you know something that’s to do with her death…”

“It’s nothing,” she said quickly. “I’m sure of it. It’s not that.”

He said nothing more, reckoning that if he was silent, she would be forced to continue, which she did.

She said, “She was younger then. It was years ago anyway. And she would have changed, Rob. People do change.”

He wanted so much to believe her. Such a simple matter to say, “Oh. Right. Well, thanks,” and ring off. In the background he could hear murmurs of conversation. He’d phoned Meredith at work, and he could have used this alone as an excuse to end their conversation at that point. So could have she, for that matter. But he didn’t take that turn. He couldn’t do so now and live with the knowledge that he’d run again, just as he’d turned a blind eye to what he knew at heart she was going to tell him if he insisted upon it.

“Seems it’s time for me to know it all, Merry. It’s no betrayal on your part. Mind, there’s nothing you can say would make a difference now.”

When she spoke at last, it sounded to him as if she were talking inside a tube, as the sound was hollow, although it could well have been that his heart was hollow. She said finally, “Eleven, then, Rob.”

“Eleven what?” he asked. Lovers? he wondered. Had Jemima had so many already? And by what age? And had she actually kept count?

“Years,” Meredith said. “That’s how old.” And when he said nothing, she rushed on with, “Oh, Rob. You don’t want to know. Really. And she wasn’t bad. She just…See, she equated things. ’Course, I didn’t know that at the time, why she did it, I mean. I just knew she might end up pregnant but she said no because she took precautions. She even knew that word, precautions. I don’t know what she used or where she got it because she wouldn’t say. Just that it wasn’t up to me to tell her right from wrong, and if I was her friend, I would know that, wouldn’t I. And then it became a matter of me not having boyfriends, see. ‘You’re only jealous, Merry.’ But that wasn’t it, Rob. She was my friend. I only wanted to keep her safe. And people talked about her so. Specially at school.”

Robbie wasn’t sure he could speak. He was standing in the kitchen and he felt blindly behind him for a chair onto which he could lower himself with infinite slowness. “Boys at school?” he said. “Boys at school were having Jemima when she was eleven? Who? How many?” Because he would find them, he thought. He would find them and he would sort them even now, so many years after the fact.

Meredith said, “I don’t know how many. I mean, she always had boyfriends, but I don’t expect…Surely not all of them, Rob.”

But he knew she was lying to protect his feelings or perhaps because she believed she’d betrayed Jemima enough, even as he was the one who’d betrayed her by not seeing what was in front of him all along.

“Tell me the rest,” he said. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

Her voice altered as she replied and he could tell she was crying. “No, no. There’s really no more.”

“God damn it, Merry-”

“Really.”

“Tell me.”

“Rob, please don’t ask.”

“What else?” And then his own voice broke when he said, “Please,” and perhaps that was what made her continue.

“If there was a boy she was doing it with and another boy wanted her…She didn’t understand. She didn’t know how to be faithful. She didn’t mean it as anything and she wasn’t a tart. She just didn’t understand how it looked to other people. I mean what they thought or might do or might ask of her. I tried to tell her, but there was this boy and that boy and this man and that man and she just couldn’t see that it really had nothing to do with love-what they wanted-and when I tried to tell her, she reckoned I was being-”

“Yes,” he said. “All right. Yes.”

She was quiet again although he could hear the rustle of something against the phone. Tissue likely. She’d wept the entire time she’d spoken. She said, “We used to quarrel. Remember? We used to talk for hours in her bedroom. Remember?”

“Aye. Aye. I remember that.”

“So you see…I tried…I should have told someone, but I didn’t know who.”

“You didn’t think to tell me?”

“I did think. Yes. But then sometimes I thought…All the men and perhaps even you…”

“Oh God, Merry.”

“I’m sorry. So sorry.”

“Why did you…? Did she say…?”

“Never. Nothing. Not that.”

“But still you thought…” He felt a laugh bubbling in him, one of simple despair at so outrageous an idea, so far from the truth of who he was and how he lived his life.

At least, he thought, with Gordon Jossie had come an alteration in his sister. Somehow she’d found what she was looking for because surely she’d been faithful to him. She had to have been. He said, “She stuck with Jossie, though. She was true to him. I mean like I told you before, he wanted to marry her and he wouldn’t have done if he had the slightest suspicion or indication that-”

“Did he?”

Something about the way she asked the question stopped him. “Did he what?”

“Want to marry her. Really.”

“’Course he did. She left because she wanted time to think about it and I expect he worried it was over between them because he phoned her and phoned her and she got herself a new mobile. So you see, she’d finally got to the point…I told you all this, Merry.” He was fairly babbling at this point, and he knew it because he reckoned there was something more to come from his sister’s friend.

There was. Meredith said, “But, Rob, before our…what do I call it? Our breakup? Our row? The end of our friendship? Before that, she told me Gordon didn’t want to marry at all. It wasn’t her, she said. He didn’t want to marry, full stop. He was afraid of marriage, she said. He was afraid of getting too close to anyone.”

“Blokes always say that, Merry. At the beginning.”

“No. Listen. She told me it was all she could do to talk him into living together, and before that it was all she could do to talk him into letting her spend the night with him, and before that it was all she could do to coax him into having sex. So to think he was mad to marry her…What would have changed him?”

“Living with her. Getting used to that. Seeing that there was no big fear to being with someone. Learning that-”

“What? Learning what? Truth is, Rob, if there was something to learn…something to discover…wouldn’t it likely be that he discovered that Jemima-”

“No.” He said it not because he believed it but because he wanted to believe it: that his sister had been to Gordon Jossie what she hadn’t been to her own brother. An open book. Wasn’t that what couples were meant to be to each other? he asked himself. But he had no answer. How bloody could he since being one half of a couple was for him the stuff of fantasy?

Meredith said, “I wish you hadn’t asked. I wish I hadn’t said. What does it matter really, now? I mean, at the end of the day she only wanted someone to love her, I think. I didn’t see that at the time, when we were girls. And when I finally did see it, when we were older, our paths were so different that when I tried to talk to her about it, it seemed like I had a problem, not Jemima.”

“It got her killed,” he said. “That’s what happened, isn’t it?”

“Surely not. Because if she’d changed as you said she’d changed, if she was faithful to Gordon…And she’d been with him longer than anyone else, hadn’t she? More than two years? Three?”

“She left in a rush. He kept ringing her.”

“You see? That means he wanted her back, which he wouldn’t have wanted if she’d been unfaithful. I think she’d grown out of all that, Rob. Really, I do.”

But Robbie could tell by the eagerness of Meredith’s tone that whatever she said from this moment onwards would be said to assuage his feelings. He felt turned every which way, and he was dizzy. Among all the new information he had gathered, there had to be an essential truth about his sister. There had to be a way to explain both her life and her death. And he had to find that truth, for he knew that its discovery would be the only way he could forgive himself for failing Jemima when she had needed him most.

BARBARA HAVERS AND Winston Nkata returned to the Operational Command Unit where they handed over the forged letters from Winchester Technical College II to the chief superintendent. Whiting read them. He was the sort of reader who formed the words with his lips as he went along. He took his time.

Barbara said, “We’ve spoken to these two blokes, sir. They didn’t write the letters. They don’t know Gordon Jossie.”

He looked up. “That,” he said, “is problematical.”

In a nutshell, Barbara thought, although he didn’t seem wildly interested in the matter. She said, “Last time we were here, you said two women had phoned up about him.”

“Did I.” Whiting seemed to be musing on the matter. “There were two calls, I believe. Two women suggesting that Jossie needed looking into.”

“And?” Barbara asked.

“And?” Whiting said.

Barbara exchanged a glance with Winston. He did the honours. “We got these letters now, see. We got a dead girl up in London connected with this bloke. He went up there on a search for her sometime back, which he doesn’t deny, and he stuck up cards with her picture on them, asking for phone calls should anyone see her. And you got two phone calls yourself drawing your ’tention to him.”

“Those calls didn’t mention a card in London,” Whiting said. “Nor did they mention your dead girl.”

“Point is the calls themselves and how things’re stacking up ’gainst Jossie.”

“Yes,” Whiting said. “That can make things look iffy. I do see that.”

Barbara decided indirection was clearly not the path to take with the chief superintendent. She said, “Sir, what do you know about Gordon Jossie that you’re not telling us?”

Whiting handed the letters back to her. “Not a bloody thing,” he said.

“Did you check him out based on those phone calls?”

“Sergeant…Is it Havers? And Nkata?” Whiting waited for their nods although Barbara could have sworn he knew their names very well despite the fact that he mispronounced both of them. “I’m not very likely to use manpower to investigate someone based on a phone call from a woman who might well be upset because a gentleman stood her up for a date.”

“You said two women,” Nkata pointed out.

“One woman, two women. The point is that they had no complaint, only suspicions, and their suspicions amounted to being suspicious, if you understand.”

“Meaning what?” Barbara asked.

“Meaning that they had nothing to be suspicious about. He wasn’t peeping in windows. He wasn’t hanging about primary schools. He wasn’t snatching handbags from old ladies. He wasn’t moving questionable bits of this or that into his house or out of it. He wasn’t inviting women on the street to step into his vehicle for a bit of you-know-what. As far as they could tell us-these phone callers who, by the way, wouldn’t leave their names-he was just a suspicious type. Those letters of yours”-he indicated the forgeries from the college-“don’t add anything to the mix. Seems to me the important bit is not that he forged them-”

“He didn’t,” Barbara said. “He can’t read or write.”

“All right. Someone else forged them. A mate of his. A girlfriend. Who knows. Have you ever considered that he wouldn’t have got himself hired as an apprentice at his age had he not had something to show he was a worthwhile risk? I daresay that’s all these letters show.”

“True enough,” Barbara said. “But the fact remains-”

“The fact remains that the important bit is whether he did his job well once he got it. And that’s what he did, yes? He served a fine apprenticeship up in Itchen Abbas. Then he began his own business. He’s built that business up and, as far as I know, he has kept his nose clean.”

“Sir-”

“I think that’s the end of the story, don’t you?”

As it happened, she didn’t, but Barbara said nothing. Nor did Nkata. And as she was careful not to look at Winston, so was he careful not to look at her. For there was something that the chief superintendent wasn’t dealing with: They’d said nothing at all to him about Gordon Jossie’s serving an apprenticeship to Ringo Heath or to anyone else, and the fact that Whiting knew about one suggested once again that there was more to Gordon Jossie and his life in the New Forest than met the eye. To Barbara there was no question about it: Chief Superintendent Zachary Whiting was fully apprised as to what the more was.

MEREDITH DECIDED FURTHER action was called for after the phone call from Rob Hastings. She could tell the poor man was equal parts crushed to the core and riddled by guilt, and since part of this was due to her mouth running on about matters best left unsaid, she took a step to rectify things. She had seen just enough cop shows on the telly to know what to do when she made the decision to go to Lyndhurst. She was fairly confident that Gina Dickens wouldn’t be in the lodgings that she claimed was hers above the Mad Hatter Tea Rooms since Gina had seemed fairly intent upon establishing her life with Gordon Jossie. Meredith reckoned that, in the pursuit of this end, she likely hadn’t darkened her own doorway in days. Should she actually be in, Meredith had her excuse ready: Came to say sorry for being such a pest. I’m just upset. That part was the truth, at least, although being upset was only the half of it.

She’d begged the rest of the day off. Splitting headache, the heat, and that time of the month. She’d work at home if they didn’t mind, where she could put a cold compress on her head. She nearly had most of the graphic done anyway. An hour more was all it would take to get it finished.

That was fine with the boss and off she went, and when she got to Lyndhurst she parked by the New Forest Museum and walked the short distance up to the tea rooms on the high street. Midsummer, and Lyndhurst was thick with tourists. The town sat squarely in the centre of the Perambulation and was generally the first stop for visitors wishing to familiarise themselves with this part of Hampshire.

Gina’s lodgings above the Mad Hatter Tea Rooms were accessed by a doorway that was separate from the tea rooms themselves, from which at this time of day the scent of baked goods rolled out onto the street. There were two lodging rooms only and since from one hip-hop music was blasting, Meredith chose the other. It was here she applied the knowledge she’d gained from watching police programmes on the telly. She used a credit card to ease the catch back. It took five tries and she was drenched in sweat-both from nerves and from the ambient temperature in the building-before she got inside. But when she managed it, she knew she’d made the right decision. For a mobile phone on the nightstand was ringing and as far as she was concerned, the ringing was fairly screaming clue.

She made a dash for it. She picked it up. She said, “Yes?” with as much authority as she could muster and as breathlessly as she could manage, in order to disguise her voice. As she did this, she looked round the room. It was furnished simply: a bed, a chest of drawers, a bedside table, a desk, a wardrobe. There was a basin with a mirror above it, but no en suite bath. As the window was closed, it was deadly hot.

There was silence on the other end of the phone. She thought she’d missed the call and she cursed to herself. Then a man’s voice said, “Babe, Scotland Yard’s been. How the hell much longer?” and she went cold from head to toe, as if a blast of refrigerated air had shot through the room.

She said, “Who is this? Tell me who this is!”

Silence in reply. Then, “Shit,” in a low mutter. And then nothing.

She said, “Hello? Hello? Who is this?” but she knew that whoever it was, he had already disconnected himself from the call. She punched the send button to return the call, although she reckoned that the man on the other end would hardly answer. But she didn’t need him to do so. She needed only to see the number from which the call had come. What she got, though, was PRIVATE NUMBER printed on the small screen. Damn, she thought. Whoever he was, he was calling from a withheld number. When the call went through, it rang and rang, as she’d expected. No voice mail, no message. It had been a call from someone in cahoots with Gina Dickens.

Meredith felt a surge of triumph at this knowledge. It proved that she’d been right from the first. She’d known that Gina Dickens was dirty. All that remained was to find out the real purpose of her presence in the New Forest, because no matter what Gina had declared about her programme to help girls at risk, Meredith didn’t buy it. As far as she was concerned, the only girl at risk had been Jemima.

Through the walls of the room, the hip-hop music continued to thump. From below, the noise from the tea rooms rose. From without, the street noise reverberated through the windows: lorries passing through Lyndhurst High Street and grinding through their gears when they hit the gentle slope, cars heading for Southampton or Beaulieu, tour coaches the size of small cottages ferrying their passengers south to Brockenhurst or even as far as the port town of Lymington and an excursion over to the Isle of Wight. Meredith remembered how Gina had spoken of the cacophony in the street beneath her window. In this, at least, she had not been lying. But in other matters…Well, that was what Meredith was here to discover.

She had to be quick. She was going from cold to hot again, and she knew she couldn’t risk opening a window and drawing attention to the room in this way. But the temperature made the air close and herself claustrophobic.

She attacked the bedside table first. The clock radio upon it was tuned to Radio Five, which didn’t seem to indicate anything, and within the single drawer of the table there was nothing but a box of tissues and an old, opened package of Blu-Tac with a small chunk of it missing. On the shelf of the table was a stack of magazines, too ancient to have belonged to Gina Dickens, Meredith reckoned.

In the wardrobe there were clothes, but not the quantity that one would associate with permanency. They were of good quality, though, in keeping with what Meredith had already seen Gina wearing. She had expensive taste. Nothing was trendy rubbish. But the clothes gave no other clue about their owner. They did make Meredith wonder how Gina expected to maintain her wardrobe on what Gordon Jossie made as a thatcher, but that was it.

She had similar luck with the chest of drawers, where the one piece of information she gleaned was that Gina definitely did not buy her knickers at discount prices. They seemed to be silk or satin, at least six different colours and prints and each pair of knickers possessed a bra to match. Meredith allowed herself a moment of knicker envy before she looked through the rest of the drawers. She saw neatly folded T-shirts, jerseys, and a few scarves. That was it.

The desk offered even less information. It displayed some tourist brochures in a wooden holder atop it and some exceedingly cheap stationery in its centre drawer along with two postcards featuring the Mad Hatter Tea Rooms. There was a single pen in a shallow depression within this drawer, but that was all. Meredith pushed it shut, sat on the desk chair, and thought about what she had seen.

Virtually nothing of use. Gina had nice clothes, she liked nice knickers, and she had a mobile phone. Why she didn’t have that phone with her was an interesting point. Had she forgotten it? Did she not want Gordon Jossie to know that she had it? Was she worried that possession of it would indicate something she didn’t wish him to know? Was she avoiding a caller to whom she didn’t wish to speak? Was she therefore on the run? The only way to get an answer to any of those questions was to ask her directly, which Meredith could hardly do without revealing she’d broken into her room, so she was out of luck.

She gazed round the place. For want of anything else to do, she looked under the bed but was not surprised when she found nothing but a suitcase, which itself contained nothing. She even examined it for a false bottom-at this point feeling fairly ridiculous-but she came up empty-handed at that. She heaved herself to her feet, once again noting the closeness of the room. She thought about splashing some water on her face, and she reckoned it wouldn’t hurt to use the basin to revive herself but the water was tepid and would have needed running for several minutes to become cool enough to do any good.

She patted her face on the hand towel provided, rehung it neatly on its rack, and then gave a closer look to the sink. It hung from the wall and was fairly modern in appearance. It was feminine as well, with flowers and vines painted onto the porcelain. Meredith ran her hand along it and then, thinking that as she’d noted it so also might have Gina, she ran her hand beneath it as well. Her fingers came to something that didn’t feel right. She squatted to have a better look.

There, beneath the basin, something had been lodged with Blu-Tac. It appeared to be a small, taped and folded package made of paper. She eased it off the underside of the basin and carried it to the desk. Carefully, she removed both the tape and the Blu-Tac for future use.

Unfolded, the paper turned out to be a piece of the room’s cheap stationery. It had been fashioned into something akin to a pouch and what that pouch held appeared to be a small medallion. Meredith would have vastly preferred a message, cryptic or otherwise. She would have liked to see “I asked Gordon Jossie to murder Jemima Hastings so that he would be free for me” although she would not have said no to, “I believe Gordon Jossie is a killer although I myself had nothing to do with it.” Instead what she had was a roundish object, looking as if it had been made as part of a metallurgy class. Clearly, it was supposed to be a perfect circle, but it hadn’t quite made it. The metal in question looked like dirty gold, but it could have been anything that headed remotely in the direction of gold, as Meredith reckoned there weren’t a lot of classes on offer that allowed students to experiment with something so expensive.

The thought of classes took her inexorably to Winchester, where Gina Dickens had come from. There seemed to be possible fruit to be borne from a fuller exploration of this. Meredith didn’t know whether this object actually belonged to Gina-nor had she the slightest idea why Gina or anyone else would have placed it beneath the basin-but the opened packet of Blu-Tac in the bedside table suggested it was hers. And as long as Gina’s ownership was a possibility, Meredith was not at a dead end in her investigation.

The question now was whether to take the little medallion with her or try to remember what it looked like so that she could describe it later. She considered drawing it, and she even went to the desk, sat, and brought out a sheet of the cheap stationery to try her hand at sketching. The problem was that the workmanship wasn’t particularly clear, and while there seemed to be embossing on the thing, she couldn’t make any of it out very well. So it seemed to her that there was nothing for it but to engage in one small act of burglary. It was in a good cause, after all.

WHEN GORDON JOSSIE arrived back at his holding, he found Gina in the last place he would ever have expected to see her: the west paddock. She was at the far side of it, and he might have missed her altogether had not one of the ponies whinnied, which directed his attention over to them. He saw the blond of Gina’s hair against the dark green backdrop of the wood in the distance. At first he thought she was merely walking on the far side of the paddock and beyond the fence, perhaps returning from a ramble in the trees. But when he climbed out of the pickup with Tess at his heels, he ventured over to the fence and found that Gina was actually within the paddock itself.

This sent his hackles soaring. From the first, Gina had made a considerable topic out of her fear of the New Forest ponies. So to find her inside the paddock with them aroused the sleeping cobra of distrust within him.

She hadn’t noticed his arrival. She was pacing along the line of the barbed-wire fencing, and she seemed intent upon ignoring the ponies as well as watching for their droppings or taking care with her footwork since she had her eyes on the ground.

He called to her. She started, one hand clutching at the collar of her shirt. In the other hand she appeared to be carrying a map.

She was wearing, he saw, her knee-high Wellingtons. This told him that whatever else she was doing, once again she was worried about adders. Briefly he thought about explaining to her that adders wouldn’t likely be in the paddock, that the paddock was not the heath. But this wasn’t a moment for explanations on his part. There was a question to be answered about what she was doing in the paddock in the first place and about the map she was holding. She smiled and waved and folded it. She said with a laugh, “You gave me quite a fright.”

“What’re you doing?” He couldn’t help it: His voice was sharp. He made a concerted effort to soften it, but he didn’t quite manage to make his tone normal. “I thought ponies scared you.”

She cast a look at the animals. They were meandering across the paddock in the direction of the water trough. Gordon gave it a look as he went over to the fence with Tess on his heels. The water was low, and he went for the hosepipe and unspooled it to the paddock. He entered, telling the dog to stay where she was-which she didn’t much like, pacing back and forth to show her displeasure-and he began topping up the trough.

As he did this, Gina picked her way in his direction, but she didn’t do it by crossing directly over to him as another person might. Rather she went by way of the fence, keeping within inches of it as she moved along. She didn’t answer him till she’d reached the eastern part of the paddock in this diligent fashion.

“You’ve found me out,” she said. “Pooh. I did so want to make it a surprise.” She cast a wary eye on the ponies. As she got closer to him, so also did she get closer to them.

“What surprise?” he asked. “And is that a map? What’re you doing with a map? How c’n a map be part of a surprise?”

She laughed. “Please. One thing at a time.”

“Why’re you inside the paddock, Gina?”

She observed him for a moment before she answered. Then she said with care, “Is something wrong? Should I not be in here?”

“You said the New Forest ponies…You said that horses in general-”

“I know what I said about horses. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t try to get over it.”

“What are you talking about?”

Gina reached his side before she replied again. She ran her hand through her sparkly hair. Despite his agitation, he liked to see her do this. He liked the way it fell back into place so perfectly no matter how she-or he-disheveled it. “Getting over an irrational fear,” she told him. “It’s called desensitisation. Haven’t you ever heard of people who get over their fears by being exposed to them?”

“Bollocks. People don’t get over their fears.”

She’d been smiling, but her smile faltered at his tone. She said, “What nonsense, Gordon. Of course they do, if they want to. They expose themselves to their fear in increments till they’re no longer afraid. Like getting over a fear of heights by slowly exposing oneself to progressively higher and higher places. Or getting over a fear of flying by getting used to the aeroplane jetway first, and then going to the doorway of the plane, and then just inside with the doors open, and then to the seats. Haven’t you heard of that?”

“What’s that have to do with being in the paddock? And carrying a map with you. What the hell are you doing with a map?”

She frowned outright then. She shifted her weight in that womanly way, one hip jutted out. She said, “Gordon, are you accusing me of something?”

“Answer the question.”

She looked as startled as she’d looked when he first called out her name. Only this time, he knew, it was because of how sharply he spoke to her.

She said quietly, “I just explained it to you. I’m trying to get used to them by being in the paddock with them. Not close to them, but not on the other side of the fence either. I was going to stay there until they didn’t make me so nervous. Then I was going to take a step or two closer to them. That’s all.”

“The map,” he said. “I want to know about the map.”

“Good grief. I took it from my car, Gordon. It’s something to wave at them, to frighten them off if they got too close.”

He said nothing in reply to this. She looked at him so closely that he turned his head to keep her from reading his expression. He felt his blood pulsing in his temples and he knew his face must be red and revealing.

She said with what sounded like great care, “Are you aware that you’re acting like you suspect me of something?”

Again, he made no reply. He wanted out of the paddock. He wanted her out of the paddock as well. He went to the gate and she followed him, saying, “What’s wrong, Gordon? Has something happened? Something else?”

“What d’you mean?” he demanded, swinging to her. “What’s supposed to have happened?”

“Well, heavens, I don’t know. But first that strange man came to speak with you. Then those detectives from Scotland Yard to tell you that Jemima-”

“This isn’t about Jemima!” he cried.

She gaped at him, then closed her mouth. She said, “All right. It’s not about Jemima. But you’re clearly upset and I can’t think it’s just that I went into the paddock to get used to the horses. Because that doesn’t make sense.”

He forced out the words because he had to say something. “They’ve talked to Ringo. He phoned me about it.”

“Ringo?” Clearly, she was nonplussed.

“He gave them letters, and the letters are false. He didn’t know that, but they’ll suss it out. Then they’ll be back here at the double. Cliff lied like I asked him to, but he’ll break if they press him. They’ll force the issue and he won’t hold out.”

“Does any of that matter?”

“Of course it matters!” He jerked the gate open. He’d forgotten about the dog. Tess raced inside and greeted Gina ecstatically. Seeing this, Gordon told himself that it had to mean something if Tess liked Gina. Tess read people well, and if she read Gina as decent and good, what else mattered?

Gina knelt to rub the dog’s head. Tess wagged her tail and bumped closer to her for more. Gina looked up at him and said, “But you went to Holland. That’s all it was. If it comes to it, you can tell the police you lied because you don’t have the paperwork. And what does it matter anyway if you don’t have the itinerary or the ticket or whatever? You went to Holland, and you can prove it some way. Hotel records. Internet searches. The person you talked to about the reeds. Really, how difficult can it actually be?” And when he didn’t answer, “Gordon, wasn’t that the case? You were in Holland, weren’t you?”

“Why d’you want to know?” He spoke explosively. It was the very last thing he intended, but he wouldn’t be pressed.

She’d risen from the dog as she spoke, and she took a step away from him now. Her gaze drifted beyond him and he swung round to see who was there, but it was only her car she was looking at and it came to him that she was thinking about leaving. She seemed somehow to master this desire because once again she spoke calmly enough, although he could see from the way her mouth formed the words that she was on the alert and prepared to run from him. He wondered how they’d got to this point, but he knew at heart that this would always be the end point he reached with a woman. It might as well have been written in stone.

She said, “Darling, what’s going on? Who’s Ringo? What letters are you talking about? Have those police come to see you again today? Or, at heart, is this just about me? Because if it is, I had no idea…I didn’t intend harm. It only seemed to me that if we’re to be together-I mean permanently-then I need to get used to the New Forest animals. Don’t I? The horses are part of your life. They’re part of the holding. I can’t avoid them forever.”

It was, if not an olive branch, then at least a fork in the road that he could take if he wanted to take it. He thought about the choices that lay ahead before he finally said, “If you wanted to get used to them, I would have helped you.”

“I know that. But then it wouldn’t have been a surprise. And that’s what I wanted it to be.” Some small tension seemed to release within her before she went on. “I’m sorry if I’ve somehow overstepped the mark. I didn’t think it would actually hurt anything. Look. Will you watch?” She took the map and unfolded it. She said, “Will you let me show you, Gordon?”

She waited for his nod. When he gave it, she turned from him. She approached the trough slowly, the map held at her side. The ponies were drinking but they raised their heads warily. They were wild, after all, and meant to remain so.

Next to him, Tess whined for attention, and he grasped her collar. Near the trough, Gina raised the map. She waved it at the ponies, and cried, “Shoo, horse!” Tess gave a sharp bark as the ponies wheeled round and trotted to the far side of the paddock.

Gina turned back to him. She said nothing. Nor did he. It was another point of choice for him, but there were so many now, so many choices and so many paths and every day there seemed to be more. One wrong move was all it would take, and he knew that better than anything.

She came back to him. When she was outside the paddock once again, he released his hold on the dog and Tess bounded to Gina. A moment for another caress and the retriever was off in the direction of the barn, loping for the shade and her water dish.

Gina stood before him. As was his habit, he was wearing his dark glasses still, and she reached up and removed them, saying, “Let me see your eyes.”

“The light,” he said, although this wasn’t quite the truth, and, “I don’t like to be without them,” which was.

She said, “Gordon, can you be easy? Will you let me help you let everything go?”

He felt tight from head to foot, held in a vice of his own creation. “I can’t.”

“You can,” she said. “Let me, my darling.”

And the miracle of Gina was that how he had been with her moments before did not matter to her. She was now incarnate. The past was the past.

She slid one hand up his chest and her arm round his neck. She drew him near her while her other hand slid down and down in order to make him hard.

“Let me help you let everything go,” she repeated, this time close and against his mouth. “Let me, darling.”

He groaned helplessly and then he chose. He closed the remaining space between them.