This Body of Death (68 page)

“It makes my head swim,” she finally said. “It’s impossible.”

“It isn’t,” he said, “especially if Gina Dickens and Frazer knew each other from the night of the gallery opening. And it would have worked, Isabelle. Carefully planned as it was, it would have worked perfectly. The only thing they didn’t take into account was Yukio Matsumoto’s presence in the cemetery that day. Frazer didn’t know Matsumoto was being Jemima’s guardian angel. Jemima likely didn’t know it herself. So neither Frazer nor Gina Dickens took into account that someone would see Jemima meet Gordon Jossie and also see Gordon Jossie leave her, very much alive.”

“
If
that was Gordon Jossie at all.”

“I don’t see how it could have been anyone else, do you?”

Isabelle considered this from every angle. All right, it could have happened that way. But there was a problem with everything Lynley had said, and she couldn’t ignore it any more than he could. She said, “Jemima left Hampshire ages ago, Thomas. If there’s a Roman treasure hoard sitting down there on the property she shared with Gordon Jossie, why the hell in all that time did neither one of them—Jossie or Jemima—do a single thing about it?”

“That’s what I’d like to find out,” he said. “But I’d like to break Frazer’s alibi first.”

S
TILL IN HER
dressing gown, she walked outside with him. She didn’t look much better than when he dumped her into the shower, but it seemed to Lynley that her spirits were raised enough that she was unlikely to drink again that evening. He was reassured by this thought. He didn’t like to think why.

She came as far as the narrow stairs that led from her basement flat up to the street. He’d mounted the first two steps when she said his name. He turned. She stood beneath him with one hand on the rail as if she intended to follow him up and the other hand at her throat, holding her dressing gown closed.

She said, “All of this could have waited till morning, couldn’t it.”

He thought about it for a moment before he said, “I suppose it could.”

“Why, then?”

“Why now instead of the morning, d’you mean?”

“Yes.” She tilted her head towards the flat, the door standing open but no lights on within. “Did you suspect?”

“What?”

“You know.”

“I thought there was a chance of it.”

“Why bother, then?”

“To sober you up? I wanted to toss round ideas with you, and I could hardly do that if you were in a stupor.”

“Why?”

“I like the give and take of a partnership. It’s how I work best, Isabelle.”

“You were meant to do this.” She touched her fingers to her chest, seeming to indicate with this gesture that she was referring to the superintendent’s job. “I wasn’t,” she added. “That’s clear enough now.”

“I wouldn’t say that. You made the point yourself: The case is complicated. You’ve been handed something with a learning curve steeper than any curve I’ve had to travel.”

“I don’t believe that at all, Thomas. But thank you for saying it. You’re a very good man.”

“Often, I think the opposite.”

“You’re thinking nonsense then.” Her eyes held his. “Thomas,” she said, “I …” But then she seemed to lose the courage to say anything more. This seemed uncharacteristic of her, so he waited to hear what she wanted to conclude with. He came down one step. She was directly below him, no longer virtually eye to eye with him but instead her head reaching just beneath his lips.

The silence between them stretched too long. It evolved from quiet into tension. It moved from tension into desire. The most natural thing in the world became the simple movement to kiss her, and when her mouth opened beneath his, that was as natural as the kiss itself. Her arms slipped round him and his round her. His hands slid beneath the dressing gown’s folds to touch her cool, soft skin.

“I want you,” she murmured at last, “to make love to me.”

“I don’t think that’s wise, Isabelle,” he said.

“I don’t care in the least,” she replied.

G
ORDON HADN’T PHONED THE
S
COTLAND
Y
ARD DETECTIVE
when Gina returned home on the previous night. He wanted instead to watch her. He had to learn exactly what she was doing here in Hampshire. He had to know what she knew.

He was rotten at acting, but that couldn’t be helped. She’d realised something was wrong the moment she’d come onto the property and found him sitting in the front garden at the table in the darkness. She was very late, and he was grateful for this. He let her think that the hour of her return was the reason for his silence and his observation of her.

She said she’d got caught up in things, but she was vague when it came to what those things were. She’d lost track of time, she said, and there she was in a meeting with a social worker from Winchester and another from Southampton, and there was a very,
very
good chance that from a special programme established for immigrant girls, funding could be diverted for the use of …On and on she chattered. Gordon wondered how he hadn’t seen earlier that words came far too easily to Gina.

They’d got through the rest of the evening and then to bed. She’d spooned against him closely in the darkness and her hips moved rhythmically against his bum. He was meant to turn and take her, and he did his part. They coupled in a furious silence meant to pose as wild desire. They were slick with sweat when the act was done.

She murmured, “Wonderful, darling,” and she cradled him as she fell into sleep. He remained awake, with despair rising in him. Which way to turn was his only concern.

In the morning she was wanton, as she’d been so often, her eyelids fluttering open, her long slow smile, her stretching of limbs, the dance of her body as she eased beneath the sheet to find him with her mouth.

He pulled himself away abruptly. He swung out of bed. He didn’t shower but dressed in what he’d worn on the previous day and went downstairs to the kitchen where he made himself coffee. She joined him there.

She hesitated at the doorway. He was at the table, beneath the shelf where Jemima had displayed a row of her childhood plastic ponies, a minor representation of one of her many collections of items she couldn’t bear to part with. He couldn’t remember where he’d put those plastic ponies now, and this concerned him. His memory didn’t generally give him any problems.

Gina cocked her head at him, and her expression was soft. “You’re worried about something. What’s happened?”

He shook his head. He wasn’t yet ready. Speaking wasn’t the difficult part for him. It was listening that he didn’t want to face.

“You didn’t sleep, did you?” she asked. “What’s wrong? Will you tell me? Is it that man again … ?” She indicated the out-of-doors.

The driveway onto the property was just outside the kitchen window, so he assumed she was talking about Whiting and wondering if there’d been another visit from him while she’d been gone from home. There hadn’t, but Gordon knew there would be. Whiting had not yet got what he wanted.

Gina went to the fridge. She poured an orange juice. She was wearing a linen dressing gown, naked beneath it, and the morning sunlight made of her body a voluptuous silhouette. She was, he thought, a real man’s woman. She knew the power of the sensual. She knew that when it came to men, the sensual always overwhelmed the sensible.

She stood at the sink, looking out of the window. She said something about the morning. It was not yet hot, but it would be. Was it more difficult, she wanted to know, working with reeds when the day was so hot?

It didn’t seem to bother her when he didn’t reply. She bent forward as if something outside had caught her attention. Then she said, “I can help you with clearing the rest of the paddock now the horses are gone.”

Horses
. He wondered for the first time at the word, at the fact that she called them horses instead of what they were, which was ponies. She’d called them horses from the first, and he hadn’t corrected her because …Why? he wondered. What had she represented to him that he hadn’t wondered about all the things that had told him from the first there was something wrong?

She continued. “I’m happy to do it. I could use the exercise and I’ve nothing on for today anyway. They think it’ll take a week or so for the money to come through, less if I’m lucky.”

“What money?”

“For the programme.” She turned to look at him. “Have you forgotten already? I told you last night. Gordon, what’s
wrong
?”

“D’you mean the west paddock?” he asked her.

She looked puzzled before she apparently twigged how his line of thought was zigzagging. “Helping you clear the rest of the west paddock?” she clarified. “Yes. I c’n work on that overgrown bit by the old section of fence. Like I said, the exercise would be—”

“Leave the paddock alone,” he said abruptly. “I want it left the way it is.”

She seemed taken aback. But she collected herself enough to curve her lips in a smile and say, “Darling, of course. I was only trying to—”

“That detective was here,” he told her. “That woman who came before with the black.”

“The Scotland Yard woman?” she asked. “I can’t remember her name.”

“Havers,” he said. He reached beneath a holder for paper napkins that stood on the table, and he brought out the card that DS Havers had given him.

“What did she want?” Gina asked.

“She wanted to talk about thatching tools. Crooks, especially. She was interested in crooks.”

“Whatever for?”

“I think she could be considering a new line of work.”

She touched her throat. “You’re joking, of course. Gordon, darling, what are you talking about? You don’t look at all well. Can I do something … ?”

He waited for her to finish, but she didn’t. Her words drifted off and she was left gazing upon him, as if waiting for inspiration. He said, “You knew her, didn’t you?”

“I’ve never seen her before in my life. How would I know her?”

“I’m not talking about the detective,” he said. “I’m talking about Jemima.”

Her eyes widened. “
Jemima
? How on earth could I have known Jemima?”

“From London,” he said. “That’s why you call them horses, isn’t it? You’re not from round here. You’re not even from Winchester, and you’re not from the countryside. It’s to do with their size but you wouldn’t know that, would you? You knew her from London.”

“Gordon! This is rubbish. Did that detective
tell
you—”

“Showed me.”

“What?
What?”

He told her then about the magazine spread, the society pictures and her own among them. At the National Portrait Gallery, he told her. There she was in the background at the gallery show where Jemima’s photo had been hung.

Her posture altered as her body stiffened. “That,” she said, “is absolute rubbish. The National Portrait Gallery? I was no more there than I was in Oz. And when was I supposed to have been there?”

“The night the show opened.”

“My God.” She shook her head, her eyes fixed on him. She placed her orange juice on the work top. The
click
made by the glass against the tiles sounded so sharp he expected the glass to shatter, but it did not. “And what else am I supposed to have done? Killed Jemima as well? Is that what you think?” She didn’t wait for a reply. She strode to the table and said, “Give me that card. What’s her name again? Where is she, Gordon?”

“Havers,” he said. “Sergeant Havers. I don’t know where she’s gone.”

She snatched the card from him and grabbed up the phone. She punched in the numbers. She waited for the call to go through. She said at last, “Is this Sergeant Havers?  …Thank you …Please confirm that for Gordon Jossie, Sergeant.” She extended the phone to him. She said, “I’d like you to be sure I’ve phoned her, Gordon, and not someone else.”

He took the phone. He said, “Sergeant—”

Her unmistakable London working-class voice said, “Bloody hell. D’you know what time … ? What’s going on? Is that Gina Dickens? You were s’posed to ring me when she came home, Mr. Jossie.”

Gordon handed the phone back to Gina, who said to him archly, “Satisfied, darling?” And then into the phone, “Sergeant Havers, where are you?  …Sway? Thank you. Please wait for me there. I shall be half an hour, all right?  …No, no. Please don’t. I’ll come to you. I want to see this magazine photo you’ve shown to Gordon …There’s a dining room in the hotel, isn’t there?  …I’ll meet you there.”

She hung up the phone, then turned back to him. She looked at him the way one might view roadkill. She said, “It’s extraordinary to me.”

His lips felt dry. “What?”

“That it never occurred to you that it might only be someone who resembled me, Gordon. How completely pathetic you and I have become.”

A
FTER A NIGHT
in which Michele Daugherty’s paranoia had entirely robbed her of sleep, Meredith Powell had departed her parents’ house in Cadnam, leaving a note to tell her mother that she’d gone into Ringwood earlier than usual to deal with a massive pile of work. After the previous day’s lecture from Mr. Hudson, Meredith knew she couldn’t afford any sort of cock-up without putting her job in jeopardy, but she also knew there was no way she’d be able to apply herself creatively to graphic designs if she didn’t sort out the enigma that was Gina Dickens. So at five in the morning, she’d given up on the idea of sleep and she’d brought herself down to Gordon Jossie’s holding, where she’d found a suitable place to park her car in the rutted entrance to a farmer’s field a short distance down the lane. She reversed into this spot and settled down to gaze in the direction of Gordon’s cottage, itself hidden by the hedge at the edge of the property.

She spent a good deal of time trying to go over everything that Gina Dickens had said to her from the moment they’d met. She found, however, that there was simply so much information that it was difficult to keep everything straight. But that had likely been Gina’s intention from the first, she concluded. The more details Gina Dickens threw out, the more difficult it would prove for Meredith to sort through them all and get to the truth. She just hadn’t counted on Meredith hiring Michele Daugherty to do the sorting for her.

Because of the way things were developing, Meredith reckoned they were all in cahoots: Chief Superintendent Whiting, Gina Dickens, and Gordon Jossie. She wasn’t sure how the partnership among them worked, but she was certain at this point that each of them had played a part in what had happened to Jemima.

It was just after seven in the morning when Gina reversed her shiny red Mini Cooper into the lane. She headed in the general direction of Mount Pleasant and, beyond it, the Southampton Road. Meredith waited a moment and followed her. There weren’t so many lanes in the area that she was likely to lose her, and she didn’t want to risk being seen.

Gina drove casually, the sunlight glinting off her hair because, as before, the top was down on her Mini Cooper. She drove like someone out for a day in the countryside, with her right arm resting on the upper ledge of the door when it wasn’t raised to finger her wind-ruffled hair. She wound through Mount Pleasant’s narrow byways, taking care to honk as a warning to potential oncoming cars when she rounded a curve, and finally when she came to the Southampton Road, she turned in the direction of Lymington.

Had the hour been later, Meredith would have assumed Gina Dickens meant to do her shopping. Indeed, when she drifted across the roundabout and headed into Marsh Lane, Meredith briefly considered that Gina might actually be getting a very early start on things by parking somewhere near Lymington High Street and perhaps having a morning coffee at a café that she knew would be open. But in advance of the high street, Gina made another turn, which took her over the river, and for a moment that chilled her with its implication of flight, Meredith was certain Gina Dickens meant to catch the ferry that would take her to the Isle of Wight.

Here again Meredith was wrong albeit relieved. Gina went in the opposite direction when she reached the other side of the river, setting a course towards the north. In very short order she was on the straight towards Hatchet Pond.

Meredith dropped back to remain unseen. She worried she might lose Gina at the junction just beyond Hatchet Pond, and she peered ahead through the windscreen, grateful for the bright sun and the way in which it winked on the chrome bits of Gina’s car, allowing them to act as a guide.

As the pond loomed ahead, Meredith gave thought to the fact that Gina Dickens might be meeting someone there, much as she herself had met Gina a few days earlier. But here again, Gina kept going and Meredith saw her make the turn east towards Beaulieu’s Georgian redbrick cottages, but instead of driving into the village, Gina went northwest at the triangular junction above Hatchet Pond, and in less than two miles she turned into North Lane.

Yes! was Meredith’s thought. North Lane was an absolute treasure trove of meeting places. While it was true that Gina had taken a completely mad route to get to the area, what couldn’t be denied was that its woodlands and its inclosures provided the kind of seclusion that someone like Gina—who was bloody well up to
something
, Meredith reckoned—would require.

North Lane followed the Beaulieu River, which disappeared from sight, off to the left beneath the trees, and Meredith dropped back once again. She was familiar with this area as it ultimately brought one to the Marchwood Bypass, which was the route to her own home in Cadnam. And when Gina led her directly to this bypass instead of stopping anywhere at all along North Lane, Meredith’s first assumption was that the other woman had spotted her following and intended to drive to Meredith’s house, where she would park, get out of her car, and wait for Meredith to come sheepishly upon her.

But again she was wrong. Gina did indeed take them to Cadnam, but she made no stop there any more than she’d stopped anywhere else along the way. Instead she now headed south towards Lyndhurst, and while Meredith gave fleeting thought to the Mad Hatter Tea Rooms and Gina Dickens’ bed-sit, it made absolutely no sense to her that Gina would drive to Lyndhurst by this circuitous route.