Elizabeth George - This Body of Death

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.