This Body of Death

Chapter Twenty-One

WHEN ROBBIE HASTINGS PULLED ONTO GORDON JOSSIE’S holding, he wasn’t sure what he intended to do, for Jossie had lied to him not only about wanting to remain with Jemima, but also-as things turned out-about when he’d last seen her. Rob had had this latter piece of information from Meredith Powell, and it was a phone call from her that had sent him to Jossie’s property. She’d been to see the police in Lyndhurst; she’d given them proof positive that Gordon had traveled into London on the morning of Jemima’s death. He’d even stayed the night in a hotel, she told Rob, and she’d given the police that information as well.

“But, Rob,” she had said and through his mobile he could hear anxiety in her voice, “I think we’ve made a mistake.”

“‘We’?” Half of we turned out to be Gina Dickens, in whose company Meredith had been ushered into the presence of Chief Superintendent Whiting-“because we said, Rob, that we wouldn’t talk to anyone but the man at the top”-and there they’d demanded to know the whereabouts of the two detectives who’d come to the New Forest from New Scotland Yard. They had something of grave importance to hand over to those detectives, they told him, and of course he asked what it was. Once he knew what it was, he asked to see it. Once he saw it, he put it into a filing folder and asked where it had come from. “Gina didn’t want to tell him, Rob. She seemed afraid of him. Afterwards she told me he’s been on the property to talk to Gordon and when he came to talk to Gordon, she didn’t know he was police. He didn’t say, and Gordon didn’t either. She said she went all cold when we walked into his office and she saw him cos she reckons Gordon must’ve known who he was all along. So now she’s nearly out of her mind with fear because if this bloke shows up on the property and if he takes that evidence with him, then Gordon’ll know how he got it because how else could he have got it except from Gina?”

As the information continued to pile up, Robbie had difficulty taking it all in. Train tickets, a hotel receipt, Gina Dickens in possession of both, Gordon Jossie, Chief Superintendent Whiting, New Scotland Yard…And then there was the not small matter of Gordon’s complete lie about Jemima’s departure: that she had someone in London or elsewhere, that he himself had wanted to remain with her and she had left him rather than what the truth probably was, that he had driven her off.

Meredith had gone on to say that Chief Superintendent Whiting had kept the rail tickets and the hotel receipt in his possession, but once she and Gina had left him and once Gina had revealed the man’s connection-“whatever it is, Rob”-to Gordon Jossie, Meredith herself had known absolutely that he was not going to give the information to New Scotland Yard although she couldn’t say why. “And we didn’t know where to find them,” Meredith wailed, “those detectives, Rob. I’ve not even talked to them yet anyway, so I don’t know who they are, so I wouldn’t recognise them if I saw them on the street. Why haven’t they come to talk to me? I was her friend, her best friend, Rob.”

To Rob, only one detail actually mattered. It wasn’t that Chief Superintendent Whiting had potential evidence in his hands and it wasn’t the whereabouts of the Scotland Yard detectives or why they hadn’t spoken yet to Meredith Powell. What mattered was that Gordon Jossie had been to London.

Rob had taken the call from Meredith just at the end of a meeting of the New Forest’s verderers, which they’d held, as usual, in the Queen’s House. And although this location was not far from the police station where the chief superintendent operated, Rob didn’t even think about going there to question Chief Superintendent Whiting about what he intended to do with the information from Meredith and Gina Dickens. He had only one destination in mind and he set off for it with a grinding of the Land Rover’s gears and Frank lurching on the seat next to him.

When he saw from the absence of vehicles that no one was at home on Jossie’s holding, Rob paced intently round the cottage as if he’d be able to find evidence of the man’s guilt leaping out of the flower beds. He looked into windows and tested doors, and the fact that they were locked in a place where virtually no one locked their doors seemed to declare the worst.

He went from the cottage to the barn and swung open the doors. He strode inside to his sister’s car, saw that the key was in the old Figaro’s ignition, and tried to make something of this, but the only thing he could make of it didn’t amount to sense anyway: that Jemima had never gone to London but had been murdered here and buried on the property, which of course hadn’t happened at all. Then he saw that the ring attached to the ignition key held another, and assuming this was the key to the cottage, Robbie took it and hurried back to the door.

What he intended to look for, he didn’t know. He only understood that he had to do something. So he opened drawers in the kitchen. He opened the fridge. He looked in the oven. He went from there to the sitting room and took the cushions off the sofa and the chairs. Finding nothing, he dashed up the stairs. Clothes cupboards were neat. Pockets were empty. Nothing languished under the beds. Towels in the bathroom were damp. A ring in the toilet bowl spoke of cleaning needing to be done, and although he wanted something to be hidden inside the cistern, there was nothing.

Then Frank started barking outside. Then another dog began barking as well. This took Robbie to one of the windows where he saw two things simultaneously. One was that Gordon Jossie had come home in the company of his golden retriever. The other was that the ponies in the paddock were just that, still in the damn paddock when Rob would have sworn to God that they belonged out on the forest, so why the hell were they still here?

The barking increased in frenzy, and Rob dashed down the stairs. Never mind that he was the one trespassing. There were questions to be asked.

Frank sounded insane, as did the other dog. Rob saw as he burst out of the cottage that for some reason Jossie had stupidly opened the door of the Land Rover and had let Frank jump out and he himself was now bent into the vehicle and searching through it as if he didn’t bloody well already know who owned it.

The Weimaraner was actually howling. It came to Rob that the animal was howling not at the other dog but at Jossie himself. This fueled Rob’s rage because if Frank howled it was because he’d been harmed, and no one was meant to lay a hand on his dog and certainly not Jossie who’d laid hands elsewhere and death was the result.

The retriever was yelping now because Frank was howling. Two dogs from the property across the lane joined in and the resulting cacophony set the ponies in motion inside the paddock. They began to trot back and forth along the line of the fence, tossing their heads, neighing.

“What the hell’re you doing?” Robbie demanded.

Jossie swung round from the Land Rover and asked a variation of the same question and with far more reason, as the door to the cottage stood wide open and it was only too clear what Rob had been up to. Rob shouted at Frank to be quiet, which only set the dog into a complete paroxysm of barking. He ordered the Weimaraner back into the vehicle, but instead Frank approached Jossie as if he intended to go for the thatcher’s throat. Jossie said, “Tess. That’ll do,” and his own animal ceased barking at once, and this made Rob think of power and control and how a need for power and control could be at the heart of what had happened to Jemima and then he thought of the railway tickets, of the hotel receipt, of Jossie’s trip to London, of his lies, and he strode over to the thatcher and heaved him against the side of the Land Rover.

He said through his teeth, “London, you bastard.”

“What the hell…” Gordon Jossie cried.

“She didn’t leave you because she had someone else,” Robbie said. “She wanted to marry you, although God knows why.” He pressed Jossie back, had his arm across the thatcher’s throat before Jossie could defend himself. With his other hand, he knocked the man’s sunglasses to the ground because he damn well intended to see his eyes for once. Jossie’s hat went with them, a baseball cap that left a line across his forehead like the mark put on Cain. “But you didn’t want that, did you?” Rob demanded. “You didn’t want her. First you used her, then you drove her away, and then you went after her.”

Jossie pushed Rob away. He was breathing hard, and he was, Rob found, far stronger than he looked. He said, “What’re you talking about? Used her for what, for the love of God?”

“I can even see how it worked, you bastard.” It seemed so obvious now that Rob wondered he hadn’t seen it before. “You wanted this place-this holding, didn’t you?-and you reckoned I could help you get it, because it’s part of my area, and land with common rights isn’t easy to come by. And I’d want to help because of Jemima, eh? It’s all fitting now.”

“You’re round the bend,” Jossie said. “Get the hell out of here.” Rob didn’t move. Jossie said, “If you don’t get off this property, I’ll-”

“What? Call the cops? I don’t think so. You were in London, Jossie, and they know it now.”

That stopped him cold. He was dead in whatever tracks he thought he was about to make. He said nothing, but Robbie could tell he was thinking like mad.

The upper hand his, Rob decided to play it. “You were in London the very day she was murdered. They’ve got your rail tickets. How d’you like that? They’ve got the receipt from the hotel and I expect your name’s on it large as life, eh? So how long d’you expect it’ll be before they come after you for a little chat? An hour? More? An afternoon? A day?”

If Jossie had been considering lying at this point, his face betrayed him. As did his body, which went limp, all fight gone because he knew he was done for. He bent, picked up his sunglasses, rubbed them against the front of his T-shirt, which was marked by sweat and stained from work. He returned the glasses to his face, seeming to hide his wary eyes, but it didn’t matter now because Rob had seen in them everything he wanted to see.

“Yes,” Robbie said. “Endgame, Gordon. And don’t think you can run because I’ll follow you to hell if I have to and I’ll bring you back.”

Jossie reached for his cap next, and he slapped it against his jeans, although he didn’t put it back on. He’d removed his windcheater and left it in a lump on the Land Rover’s seat. He grabbed it up in the same lump and said, “All right, Rob.” His voice was quiet and Rob saw that his lips had gone the colour of putty. “All right,” he said again.

“Meaning what exactly?”

“You know.”

“You were there.”

“If I was, whatever I say won’t make a difference.”

“You’ve lied about Jemima from the first.”

“I’ve not-”

“She wasn’t running to someone in London. She didn’t leave you for that. She had no one else, in London or anywhere. There was only you, and you were who she wanted. But you didn’t want her: commitment, marriage, whatever. So you drove her away.”

Jossie looked towards the ponies in the paddock. He said, “That’s not how it was.”

“Are you denying you were there, man? Cops check the CCTV films from the railway station-in Sway, in London-and you’ll not be on them the day she died? They take your photo to that hotel and no one’ll remember you were there for a night?”

“I had no reason to kill Jemima.” Gordon licked his lips. He glanced over his shoulder, back towards the lane, as if seeking someone coming to rescue him from this confrontation. “Why the hell would I want her dead?”

“She’d met someone new once she got to London. She told me as much. And then it was dog in the manger for you, wasn’t it. You didn’t want her but, by God, no one else was going to have her.”

“I’d no idea she had anyone else. I still don’t know that. How was I to know?”

“Because you tracked her. You found her, and you talked to her. She would have told you.”

“And if that’s what happened, why would I care? I had someone else as well. I have someone else. I didn’t kill her. I swear to God-”

“You don’t deny being there. There in London.”

“I wanted to talk to her, Rob. I’d been trying to find her for months. Then I got a phone call…Some bloke had seen the cards I’d put up. He left a message saying where Jemima was. Just where she worked, in Covent Garden. I phoned there-a cigar shop-but she wouldn’t talk to me. Then she rang me a few days later and said yes, all right, she was willing to meet me. Not where she worked, she said, but at that place.”

At the cemetery, Rob thought. But what Jossie was saying didn’t make sense. Jemima had someone new. Jossie had someone new. What had they to talk about?

Rob walked to the paddock, where the ponies had gone back to grazing. He stood at the fence and looked at them. They were too sleek, too well fed. Gordon was doing them no service by keeping them here. They were meant to forage all year long; they were part of a herd. Rob opened the gate and went into the paddock.

“What are you doing?” Jossie demanded.

“My job.” Behind him, Rob heard the thatcher follow him into the paddock. “Why’re they here?” he asked him. “They’re meant to be on the forest with the others.”

“They were lame.”

Rob went closer to the ponies. He shushed them gently as, behind him, Jossie closed the paddock gate. It didn’t take any longer than a moment for Rob to see that the ponies were perfectly fine, and he could feel their restless need to be out of there and with the others in the herd.

He said, “They’re not lame now. So why’ve you not-” And then he saw something far more curious than the oddity of healthy ponies locked up in a paddock in July. He saw the way their tails were clipped. Despite the growth of hair since the last autumn drift when the ponies had been marked, the pattern of the clipping on these ponies’ tails was still quite readable and what that pattern said was that neither one of the animals belonged in this particular area of the New Forest at all. Indeed, the ponies were branded as well, and the brand identified them as coming from the north part of the Perambulation, near Minstead, from a holding located next to Boldre Gardens.

He said, unnecessarily, “These ponies aren’t yours. What the hell are you up to?”

Jossie said nothing.

Robbie waited. They had a moment of stalemate. It came to Rob that further conversation or argument with the thatcher was going to be pointless. It also came to him that it didn’t matter. The cops were on to him now.

He said, “Right then. Whatever you want. I’ll come tomorrow with a trailer to fetch them. They need to go back where they belong. And you need to keep your hands off other people’s livestock.”

AT FIRST GORDON tried to believe Robbie Hastings had been bluffing, because to believe anything else would mean one of two things. Either he himself had blindly misplaced trust yet another mad time in his life or someone had broken into his house, found damning evidence that he had not even known would be damning, and taken it away to bide his time or her time and to present it to the cops when it could do the most damage to him.

Of the two possibilities, he preferred the second one because although it would mean the end was near, at least it would not mean he’d been betrayed by someone he trusted. If, on the other hand, it was the first one, he believed he might not recover from the blow.

Yet he knew it was far more likely that Gina had found the railway tickets and the hotel receipt than it was that Meredith Powell or someone with equal antipathy for him had entered his house, gone through the rubbish, and pocketed those materials without his knowledge. So when Gina returned home, he was waiting for her.

He heard her car first. It was odd because she cut the engine as she came into the driveway, and she coasted to a stop behind his pickup. When she got out, she closed the door so quietly that he couldn’t even hear the click of it. Nor could he hear her footsteps on the gravel or the sound of the back door opening.

She didn’t call his name as she usually did. Instead, she came up the stairs and into the bedroom and she gave a start when she saw him by the window, the sun behind him and the rest of him, he knew, just a silhouette to her. But she made a quick recovery. She said, “Here you are,” and she smiled as if nothing was wrong, and for that single moment how he wanted to believe that she had not given him up to the police.

He said nothing as he tried to gather his wits together. She brushed an errant lock of hair from her cheek. She said his name, and when he didn’t reply, she took a step towards him and said, “Is something wrong, Gordon?”

Something. Everything. Had there been a moment when he’d thought that things could ever be right? And why had he thought that? A woman’s smile, perhaps, the touch of a hand that was soft and smooth against his skin, his hands on the fullness of hips or buttocks, his mouth on the sweetness of breasts…Had he been so much of a fool that the mere act of having a woman somehow could obliterate all that had gone before?

He wondered what Gina knew at this point. The fact that she was here suggested it was little enough, but the fact that she had possibly-probably-found the rail tickets, found the hotel’s receipt, keeping them close to her until she could use them to harm him…And why had he not thrown them away on the platform in Sway upon his return? That was the real question. Had he only thought to do so, he and this woman would not be standing here in this bedroom, in the insufferable summer heat, facing each other with the sin of betrayal in both of their hearts, not only in hers, because he could not claim she was the only sinner.

He hadn’t thrown the tickets away on the station platform and he hadn’t rid himself of the receipt because he hadn’t considered that something might happen to Jemima, that his possession of those bits of paper might damn him, that Gina might find them and keep them and say nothing about his lie to her of having gone to Holland, allowing him to dig himself in deeper and deeper and still not saying a word about what she knew about where he had really been, which was not in Holland, not on a farm talking to someone about reeds, not out of the country at all but rather in the heart of a London cemetery trying to wrest from Jemima’s possession those things she could use to destroy him if she chose.

Gina said, “Gordon, why’re you not answering me? Why’re you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re…” She brushed at her hair again, although this time none of it was out of place. Her lips curved but her smile faltered. “Why won’t you answer? Why’re you staring? Is something wrong?”

“I went to talk to her, Gina,” he said. “That’s all I did.”

She furrowed her brow. “Who?”

“I needed to talk to her. She agreed to meet me. I didn’t tell you only because there was no reason to tell you. It was over between us, but she had something of mine that I wanted back.”

She said, the realisation apparently coming to her, “You saw Jemima? When?”

He said, “Don’t pretend you haven’t sussed that. Rob Hastings was here.”

She said, “Gordon, I don’t see how…Rob Hastings?” She gave a small laugh but it held no humour. “You know, you’re actually frightening me. You sound…I don’t know…fierce? Did Rob Hastings say something to you about me? Did he do something? Did you argue with him?”

“He told me about the rail tickets and the hotel receipt.”

“What rail tickets? What hotel receipt?”

“The ones you found. The ones you handed over.”

Her hand rose. She placed the tips of her fingers between her breasts. She said, “Gordon, honestly. You’re…What are you talking about? Did Rob Hastings claim that I gave him something? Something of yours?”

“The cops,” he said.

“What about them?”

“You gave the rail tickets and that hotel receipt to the cops. But if you’d asked me about them instead, I would have told you the truth. I didn’t before this because I didn’t want you to worry. I didn’t want you to think there might still be something between us, because there wasn’t.”

Gina’s eyes-wide, blue, more beautiful than the northern sky-observed him as her head slowly tilted to one side. She said, “What on earth are you talking about? What tickets? What receipts? What did Rob Hastings claim I did?”

He’d claimed nothing, of course. Gordon had merely concluded. And he’d done that because it seemed to him that, unless someone had surreptitiously gone through his rubbish, no one else could have come across those items save Gina. He said, “Rob told me the cops in Lyndhurst have what proves I was in London that day. The day she died.”

“But you weren’t.” Gina’s voice sounded perfectly reasonable. “You were in Holland. You went about the reeds because those from Turkey are becoming rubbish. You didn’t keep the tickets to Holland, so you had to say you were working that day. And Cliff told the police-that man and woman from Scotland Yard-that you were working because you knew they’d think you were lying if you didn’t produce those tickets. And that’s what happened.”

“No. What happened is I went to London. What happened is that I met Jemima in the place she died. On the day she died.”

“Don’t say that!”

“It’s the truth. But when I left her, she was alive. She was sitting on a stone bench at the edge of a clearing where there’s an old chapel and she was alive. I’d not got from her what I wanted to get, but I didn’t hurt her. I came home the next day so you’d think I’d gone to Holland, and I threw those tickets in the rubbish bin. That’s where you found them.”

“No,” she said. “Absolutely not. And if I had found them and been confused by them, I would’ve talked to you. I would’ve asked you why you lied to me. You know that, Gordon.”

“So how do the cops-”

“Rob Hastings told you they have the tickets?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Then Rob Hastings is lying. He wants you to be blamed. He wants you to…I don’t know…to do something crazy so the police will think…Good heavens, Gordon, he could’ve gone through the rubbish himself, found those tickets, and handed them over to the police. Or he could be holding on to them, just waiting for the moment to use them against you. Or if not him, then someone else with equal dislike for you. But why would I do anything with any tickets other than simply talk to you about them? Have I the slightest reason to do something that might cause you trouble? Look at me. Have I?”

“If you thought that I’d hurt Jemima…”

“Why on earth would I think that? You were through with each other, you and Jemima. You told me that and I believed you.”

“It was true.”

“Then…?”

He said nothing.

She approached him. He could tell she was hesitant, as if he were an anxious animal in need of calming. And she was just as anxious, he could tell. What he couldn’t sense was the source of her anxiety: his paranoia? his accusations? her guilt? the desperation each of them felt to be believed by the other? And why was there desperation at all? He knew for a certainty what he had to lose. But what had she?

She seemed to hear the question, and she said, “So few people have anything good between them. Don’t you see that?”

He didn’t reply, but he felt compelled to look at her, right into her eyes, and the fact of this compulsion made him tear his gaze from her and look anywhere else, which was out of the window. He turned to it. He could see the paddock and the ponies within it.

He said slowly, “You said you were afraid of them. But you went inside. You were in there with them. So you weren’t afraid, were you? Because if you were, you wouldn’t have gone inside for any reason.”

“The horses? Gordon, I tried to explain-”

“You would have just waited for me to release them onto the forest again. You knew I’d do that eventually. I’d have to do it. Then it would have been perfectly safe to go in but then you wouldn’t have had a reason, would you.”

“Gordon. Gordon.” She was near him now. “Listen to yourself. That doesn’t make sense.”

Like an animal, he could smell her, so close was she. The odour was faint, but it combined the scent she wore, a light sheen of perspiration, and something else. He thought it might be fear. Equally, he thought it might be discovery. His discovery or hers, he didn’t know, but it was there and it was real. Feral.

The hair on his arms stirred, as if he were in the presence of danger, which he was. He always had been and this fact was so odd to him that he wanted to laugh like a wild man as he realised the simple truth that everything was completely backwards in his life: He could hide but he could not run.

She said, “What are you accusing me of? Why are you accusing me of anything? You’re acting like…” She hesitated, not as if she was searching for a word, but rather as if she knew quite well what he was acting like and the last thing she wanted was to say it.

“You want me to be arrested, don’t you?” Still, it was the ponies he looked at. They seemed to him to hold the answers. “You want me to be in trouble.”

“Why would I want that? Look at me. Please. Turn around. Look at me, Gordon.”

He felt her hand on his shoulder. He flinched. She withdrew it. She said his name. He said, “She was alive when I left her. She was sitting on that stone bench in the cemetery. And she was alive. I swear it.”

“Of course she was alive,” Gina murmured. “You had no reason to harm Jemima.”

The ponies outside trotted along the fence, as if knowing it was time to be released.

“No one will believe that, though,” he said, more to himself than to her. “He-above all-won’t believe it now he has those tickets and that receipt.” So he would return, Gordon thought bleakly. Again and again. Over and over and directly into the end of time.

“Then you must just tell the truth.” She touched him again, the back of his head this time, her fingers light on his hair. “Why on earth didn’t you simply tell the truth in the first place?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? he thought bitterly. Tell the truth and to hell with the consequences, even when the consequences were going to be death. Or worse than death because at least death would put an end to how he had to live.

She said, so near to him now, “Why didn’t you tell me? You can always talk to me, Gordon. Nothing you tell me could ever change how I feel about you.” And then he felt her cheek pressing against his back and her hands upon him, her knowing hands. They were first at his waist. Then her arms went round him and her soft hands were on his chest. She said, “Gordon, Gordon,” and then the hands descended, first to his stomach and then, caressing, between his thighs, reaching for him, reaching. “I would never,” she murmured. “I would never, ever, ever, darling…”

He felt the heat, the pressure, and the surge of blood. It was such a good place to go, so good that whenever he was there, nothing else intruded upon his thoughts. So happen, happen, let it happen, he thought. For didn’t he deserve-

He jerked away from her with a cry and swung round to face her.

She blinked at him. “Gordon?”

“No!”

“Why? Gordon, so few people-”

“Get away from me. I can see it now. It’s down to you that-”

“Gordon? Gordon!”

“I don’t want you here. I want you gone. Go bloody God damn you to hell away.”

MEREDITH WAS HEADING for her car when her mobile rang. It was Gina. She was sobbing, unable to catch her breath long enough to make herself clear. All Meredith could tell was that something had happened between Gina and Gordon Jossie in the aftermath of the visit she and Gina had made to the Lyndhurst police station. For a moment Meredith thought that Chief Superintendent Whiting had shown up on Gordon’s property with the evidence they’d given him, but that didn’t seem to be the case, or if it was, Gina didn’t say so. What she did say was that Gordon had somehow discovered that his railway tickets and his hotel receipt were in the hands of the cops and he was in a terrifying rage about it. Gina had fled the property and was now holed up in her bed-sit above the Mad Hatter Tea Rooms.

“I’m that scared,” she cried. “He knows I’m the one. I don’t know what he’ll do. I tried to pretend…He accused me…What could I say? I didn’t know how to make him believe…I’m so afraid. I can’t stay here. If I do, he’ll come. He knows where…” She sobbed anew. “I should never have…He wouldn’t have hurt her. But I thought he should explain to the police…because if they found it…”

Meredith said, “I’ll come over straightaway. If he bangs on the door, you ring triple nine.”

“Where are you?”

“Ringwood.”

“But that’ll take…He’ll come after me, Meredith. He was so angry.”

“Sit in one of the tea rooms then. He won’t go after you there. Not in public. Scream your head off if you have to.”

“I shouldn’t have-”

“What? You shouldn’t have gone to the cops? What else were you supposed to do?”

“But how did he know they have those tickets? How could he know? Did you tell someone?”

Meredith hesitated. She didn’t want to admit she’d told Robbie Hastings. She picked up her pace to get to her car, and she said, “That bloke Whiting. He’d’ve gone out there with questions straightaway when we gave him that stuff. But this is good, Gina. It’s what we wanted to happen. Don’t you see that?”

“I knew he’d know. That’s why I wanted you to be the one to-”

“It’s going to be all right.” Meredith ended the call.

She was, at this point, some distance from Lyndhurst but the dual carriageway out of Ringwood was going to help her. Her nerves begged for the affirmation tape to be played, so as she drove, she listened to it, repeating the phrases feverishly: I love you, I want you, you are special to me, I see you and I hear you, it’s not what you do but who you are that I love, I love you, I want you, you are special to me, I see you and I hear you, it’s not what you do but who you are that I love. And then I am enough, I am enough, I am enough, I am enough. And when that didn’t seem to be the ticket, I am a child of God, beloved to Him, I am a child of God, beloved to Him.

SHE STEAMED INTO Lyndhurst some twenty minutes later. She felt marginally calmed. She left her car by the New Forest Museum and hurried back along the car park’s narrow entry towards the high street, where a tailback from the traffic lights for the Romsey Road made crossing between the vehicles easy.

Gina wasn’t in the tea rooms. These were closed for the day anyway, but the proprietress was still there doing her evening cleanup, so Meredith knew that had Gina wanted to sit and wait and be perfectly safe, she could have done so. Which meant, she concluded, that Gina had calmed down.

She climbed the stairs. It was silent above, with just the noises from the high street drifting in from the open doorway. As before, it was hotter than Hades in the building, and Meredith felt the sweat trickle down her back, although she knew it was only partly due to the heat. The other part was fear. What if he was here already? In the room? With Gina? Having followed her back to Lyndhurst and ready to do his worst.

Meredith had barely knocked on the door when it was flung open. Gina presented an unexpected sight. Her face was puffy and red. She was holding a flannel to the upper part of her arm, and a seam had given way on the sleeve of the shirt she was wearing.

Meredith cried out, “Oh my God!”

“He was upset. He didn’t mean to…”

“What did he do?”

Gina crossed to the basin where, Meredith saw, she’d put a few pathetic cubes of ice. These she wrapped into the washing flannel and when she did so, Meredith saw the ugly red mark on her arm. It looked the size of a fist.

She said, “We’re phoning the police. That’s assault. The police have to know.”

“I should never have gone to them. He wouldn’t have hurt her. That’s not who he is. I should have known that.”

“Are you mad? Look at what he just did to you! We must-”

“We’ve done enough. He’s frightened. He admits he was there. Then she died.”

“He admitted it? You must tell the police. Those detectives from Scotland Yard. Oh, where the hell are they?”

“Not that he killed her. Never that. He admitted he saw her. They had arranged to meet. He said he had to know for sure it was finished between them before he and I could…” She began to cry. She held the flannel back to her arm and she gave a wince when it touched her.

“We must get you to casualty. That could be a serious injury.”

“It’s nothing. A bruise, that’s all.” She looked down at her arm. Her lips moved convulsively. “I deserved it.”

“That’s mad! That’s what abused women always say.”

“I didn’t believe in him. And not to believe in him and then to betray him when I could have just asked him, and when all he did was go to talk to her to make sure they were done with each other so that he and I…? He hates me now. I betrayed him.”

“Don’t talk like that. If anyone did any betraying, we both know who it was. Why would you believe him anyway? He says he went there to make sure it was finished between them, but what else would he say? What else could he say now he knows the cops have the evidence they need? He’s in trouble, and he’s running scared. He’s going to cut down anyone in his way.”

“I can’t believe it of him. It’s that policeman, Meredith. The chief superintendent we saw.”

“You think he killed Jemima?”

“I told you earlier: He’s been to see Gordon. There’s something between them. Something not right.”

“You think it’s Jemima?” Meredith asked. “Jemima’s between them? They killed her together?”

“No, no. Oh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought a thing about him, about him coming out to see Gordon at home those times, but then when we walked into his office today and I saw who he really is…I mean, that he’s a cop, that he’s someone important…When he came to the cottage, he never said he was a cop. And Gordon never said either. But he must know, mustn’t he?”

Meredith finally saw how all of it fitted. More, she saw how they’d put themselves into real danger, she and Gina. For if Gordon Jossie and the chief superintendent were engaged in something together, she and Gina had handed over a piece of evidence that Whiting would need to destroy at once. But he wouldn’t need to destroy only the tickets and the hotel receipt, would he. He would also need to destroy those people who knew about them.

He would have recognised Gina, obviously. But he didn’t know who Meredith herself was and she didn’t think she’d given him her name. So she was safe, for the moment. She and Gina could…Or had she? she wondered. Had she said her name? Had she introduced…shown identification…something? Isn’t that what one always did? No, no. She hadn’t done so. They’d merely gone to his office. They’d handed over the evidence, they’d spoken to him, and…God. God. She couldn’t remember. Why on earth couldn’t she remember? Because she was in a muddle, she thought. There was too much going on. She was getting confused. There was Gina, there was Gina’s panic, there was evidence, there was Gordon’s rage, and there was probably something else as well but she couldn’t remember.

She said to Gina, “We’ve got to get out of here. I’m taking you home.”

“But-”

“Come on. You can’t stay here and neither can I.”

She helped Gina gather her belongings, which were few enough. They threw them into a carrier bag and got under way. Gina would follow Meredith in her own car, and they would go to Cadnam. It seemed the safest possible place. They would have to share not only a room but also a bed and they would have to cook up some story for Meredith’s parents, but Meredith had time to work on that on the drive home, and when she pulled into the driveway at her parents’ house, she told Gina that a gas leak at the Mad Hatter Tea Rooms had made her lodging unfit for habitation. At such short notice, it was the best she could do.

She said, “You’ve just come to work at Gerber and Hudson as the receptionist, all right?”

Gina nodded, but she looked fearful, as if Meredith’s parents might phone up Gordon Jossie and announce her whereabouts should she get part of the story wrong.

She relaxed a bit as Cammie came charging out of the house, shouting, “Mummy! Mummy!” The little girl flung herself at Meredith, wrapping her arms tightly round Meredith’s legs. “Gran wants to know where you been, Mummy.” And to Gina, “My name’s Cammie. What’s yours?”

Gina smiled and Meredith could see her shoulders change, as if tension was draining out of them. She said, “I’m Gina.”

“I’m five years old,” Cammie told her, demonstrating her age with her fingers as Meredith lifted her to her hip. “I’ll be six years old next, but not for a long time cos I jus’ turned five in May. We had a party. D’you have parties on your birthday?”

“I haven’t in a long time.”

“That’s too bad. Birthday parties are lovely, especially if you have cake.” And then, typically, she was off in another conversational direction. “Mummy, Gran’s cross cos you didn’t ring her and say you’d be late. You’re meant to ring her.”

“I’ll apologise.” Meredith kissed her daughter with the loudest smack of her lips that she could manage, the way Cammie liked. She set her on the ground. “Could you run inside and tell her we have company, Cam?”

Whatever pique Janet Powell might have been feeling thus was dissipated when Meredith ushered Gina into the house. Her parents were nothing if not hospitable, and once Meredith told them the spurious tale of the gas leak at the Mad Hatter Tea Rooms, nothing more needed to be said.

Janet murmured, “Terrible, terrible, pet,” and patted Gina on the back. “Well, we can’t have you stopping there, can we? You sit right here and let me fix you a nice plate of ham salad. Cammie, you take Gina’s bag to your mum’s room and put out fresh towels in the bathroom. And ask your granddad will he scrub the tub.”

Cammie scampered off to do all this, announcing that she’d even let Gina use her own personal bunny towels and calling out, “Granddad! We’re to clean the bath, you an’ me,” as Gina sat at the table.

Meredith helped her mother put together the ham salad. Neither she nor Gina was actually hungry-how could they have been, considering the circumstances?-but they both made an effort, as if with the mutually unspoken knowledge that failure to do so would arouse suspicion where further suspicion was unwanted.

Gina went along with the idea of the gas leak with an ease that Meredith found herself admiring greatly, putting aside her worries about Gordon Jossie in a way that Meredith herself could never have managed in the same situation. Indeed, she soon had engaged Janet Powell in a conversation on the topic of Janet herself, her long marriage to Meredith’s father, motherhood, and grand-motherhood. Meredith could tell her mother was charmed.

Nothing disturbed the evening and by the time darkness fell, Meredith’s guard had melted away. They were safe, for now. Tomorrow would be time enough to consider what to do next.

She began to see that she had been wrong about Gina Dickens. Gina was just as much a victim in this as Jemima had been. Each of them had made the same mistake: For some reason that Meredith herself would never be able to understand, each of the women had fallen for Gordon Jossie, and Gordon Jossie had deceived them both.

She couldn’t comprehend how two intelligent women had failed to see Gordon for what he so obviously was, but then she had to admit that her distrust of men wasn’t something that other women would naturally share. Besides, people generally learned from their own encounters with the opposite sex. People didn’t usually learn from hearing tales about others’ relationships gone sour.

This had been the case for Jemima, and it was undoubtedly the case for Gina. She was learning now, that was true, although it still seemed that she didn’t want to believe.

“I still can’t think he hurt her,” Gina said in a low voice when they were alone in Meredith’s bedroom. And then she added before Meredith could make an acidulous comment about Gordon Jossie, “Anyway, thank you. You’re a real friend, Meredith. And your mum’s lovely. So is Cammie. And your dad. You’re very lucky.”

Meredith considered this. She said, “For a long time, it didn’t feel that way.” She told Gina then about Cammie’s father. She recited the whole wretched tale. She finished by saying, “When I wouldn’t have an abortion, that was that. He said I’d have to prove in court that he was the dad, but at that point I actually didn’t care to.”

“He doesn’t help you at all? He doesn’t support her?”

“If he sent me a cheque, I’d set fire to it. Way I see it, he’s the one losing out. I have Cammie, and he’ll never know her.”

“What does she think about her dad?”

“She knows that some kids have dads and others don’t. We reckoned-Mum and Dad and me-if we didn’t make it a tragedy, she wouldn’t see it that way.”

“But she must ask.”

“Sometimes. But at the end of the day, she’s more interested in seeing the otters at the wildlife park, so we don’t have to have much of a conversation about it. In time, I’ll tell her some version of the story, but she’ll be older then.” Meredith shrugged, and Gina squeezed her hand. They were sitting on the edge of the bed, in the dim light of a single bedside lamp. The house was silent aside from their whispers.

Gina said, “I expect you know you did the right thing, but it’s not been easy for you, has it?”

Meredith shook her head. She found herself grateful for the understanding, for she knew that it looked to others as if it had been easy and she never spoke about it in any other way. She lived with her parents, after all, and they loved Cammie. Meredith’s mum looked after the little girl while Meredith went off to work. What could be simpler? Many things, of course, as it turned out, and topping the list was being single, being free, and being in pursuit of the career she’d set off to London to have in the first place. That was gone now, but not forgotten.

Meredith blinked quickly as she realised how long it had been since she’d had a close friend of her own age. She said, “Ta,” to Gina and then she considered what real friendship actually meant: confidences shared, no secrets kept. Yet she had one that she needed to part with.

She said, “Gina,” and she took a deep breath, “I’ve got something of yours.”

Gina looked puzzled. “Mine? What?”

Meredith fetched her bag from the top of the chest of drawers. She dumped its contents next to Gina, and she pawed through them till she had what she was looking for: the tiny packet she’d found beneath the basin in Gina’s lodging. She held it in the palm of her hand and she extended it to Gina.

“I broke into your bed-sit.” She could feel her face flush to pure red. “I was looking for something that would tell me…” Meredith thought about it. What had she been looking for? She hadn’t known then and she didn’t know now. She said, “I don’t know what I was looking for, but this is what I found, and I took it. I’m sorry. It was a terrible thing to do.”

Gina looked at the little packet of folded paper, but she didn’t take it. Her shapely eyebrows drew together. “What is it?”

Meredith hadn’t for a moment considered that what she’d found might not actually belong to Gina. She’d discovered it in Gina’s room; ergo, it was hers. She withdrew her hand and removed the wrapping from round the roughly shaped circle of gold. Again, she extended her hand to Gina and this time Gina picked the small piece of gold from Meredith’s palm and held it in her own.

She said, “D’you think it’s real, Meredith?”

“Real what?”

“Real gold.” Gina peered at it closely. She said, “It’s quite old, isn’t it. Look how it’s worn down. I c’n make out a head. And there’re some letters as well.” She looked up. “I think it’s a coin. Or p’rhaps a medal, an award of some kind. Have you a magnifying glass?”

Meredith thought about this. Her mother used a small one to thread the needle of her sewing machine. She went to fetch it and handed it over. Gina used it to try to make out what was depicted on the object she held. She said, “Some bloke’s head, all right. He’s wearing one of those circlet crowns.”

“Like a king would wear into battle, over his armour?”

Gina nodded. “There’re words as well, but I can’t make them out. Only they don’t look like English.”

Meredith thought. A coin or medal possibly fashioned from gold, a king, words in a foreign language. She thought also of where they lived, in the New Forest itself, a place long ago established as the hunting grounds for William the Conqueror. He didn’t speak English. None of the court spoke English then. French was their language.

“Is it French?” she asked.

Gina said, “Can’t tell. Have a look yourself. It’s not easy to read.”

It wasn’t. The letters were blurred, likely with time and usage, which suggested the way any coin would become less easy to read, having been carried round, handled, and passed from one person to another.

“I expect it’s valuable,” Gina said, “if only because it’s gold. Course, I’m only assuming it’s gold. I s’pose it could be something else.”

“What else?” Meredith said.

“I don’t know. Brass? Bronze?”

“Why hide a brass coin? Or a bronze one? I expect it’s gold, all right.” She raised her head. “Only question is, if it’s not yours-”

“Honestly? I’ve never seen it in my life.”

“-then how did it get into your room?”

Gina said, sounding delicate about it, “Truth to tell, Meredith, if you broke into the room so easily…”

Meredith finished the thought. “Someone else could have done the same. And left the coin beneath the basin as well.”

“Is that where you found it?” Gina was quiet, mulling this over. “Well, either whoever had the room before me hid the coin, left in a hurry, and forgot about it,” she finally said, “or someone put it there while I’ve had the room.”

“We need to know who that person was,” Meredith said.

“Yes. I think we do.”