Elizabeth George - This Body of Death

“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.