Elizabeth George - This Body of Death

“Jemima’s blood?” Isabelle asked. “You got it on your clothing when you removed the spike?”

“It was everywhere.” He closed his eyes.

His sister said, “That’s enough,” to Isabelle.

Are you mad? was what Isabelle wanted to reply, hardly the question to ask the sister of a paranoid schizophrenic. She’d heard virtually nothing from the man, and certainly not a single word that could be used in court. Or used even to press charges against him. Or against anyone. She’d be laughed off the force if she even tried. She said, “Why were you there, in the cemetery, on that day?”

Still with his eyes closed-and God only knew what he was seeing behind his lids-Yukio said, “It was the choice they gave me. To guard or to fight. I chose to guard but they wanted something else.”

“So you fought? Did you have a fight with Jemima?”

“That’s not what he’s saying,” Miyoshi said. “He didn’t fight with that woman. He tried to save her. Hiro, she’s trying to bend his words.”

“I’m trying to learn what happened that day,” Isabelle told her. “If you can’t see that-”

“Then try bending the conversation in another direction,” Miyoshi snapped. And then to her brother, with her hand stroking his forehead, “Yukio, were you there to protect that woman in the cemetery? Is that why you were there when she was attacked? Did you try to save her? Is that what you’re saying?”

Yukio opened his eyes. He looked at his sister but didn’t seem to see her. He said, and for the first time, his voice was quite clear, “I watched her.”

“Can you tell me what you saw?” Miyoshi asked him.

It came out haltingly and half of it was obscured by what Isabelle assumed were either biblical references or products of his fevered mind. He spoke of Jemima in the clearing where the cemetery’s chapel stood. She sat on a bench, read a book, used her mobile phone. Ultimately she was joined by a man. Sunglasses and a baseball cap constituted the limit of the description that Yukio Matsumoto provided, which could have applied to one quarter of the male population of the country, if not the world. It telegraphed disguise so loudly and clearly that Isabelle thought Yukio Matsumoto was either manufacturing it on the spot or they had an image-completely useless-of their killer at last. She wasn’t sure which. But then things got dicey.

This man had a conversation with Jemima upon the stone bench where Jemima sat. Yukio had no idea how long the conversation lasted, but when it ended, the man left.

And when he left, Jemima Hastings was, decidedly, still alive.

She used her mobile again. Once, twice, three times? Five hundred times? Yukio didn’t know. But then she took a call. After that, she walked to the side of the chapel and out of his range of vision.

And then? Isabelle asked.

Nothing. At least not at first, not for some minutes. Then a man appeared from that same side of the ruined chapel. A man in black-

God, why were they always in black? Isabelle wondered.

– who carried a rucksack and who made for the trees. Away from the chapel, out of sight altogether.

Yukio waited then. But Jemima Hastings did not return to the chapel clearing. So he went to look for her and that was how he discovered what he had not seen before: that there was a tiny building abutting the chapel. In this building Jemima lay wounded, her hands scrabbling round her throat, which was how he saw the spike. He thought she was trying to pull it out, and so he helped her.

And thus, Isabelle thought, the river of blood from her artery, which had already spurted out upon the yellow shirt worn by her killer, began to pulse out with every beat of her heart. Nothing Yukio could have done would have saved her. Not with a wound like that, exacerbated when he’d removed the spike.

If, she thought, he was to be believed. And she had a terrible feeling that he was indeed.

One man in sunglasses and a baseball cap. The other in black. They would need to try to get e-fits of both of them, and Isabelle prayed only that this could be managed before Zaynab Bourne got there and threw a spanner in everything.

ROBBIE HASTINGS HAD ENCOUNTERED NO DIFFICULTY WHEN he went to the Lyndhurst police station. His thought had been to insist on quick action, but that wasn’t necessary as it turned out. Upon identifying himself, he’d been escorted into the chief superintendent’s office, where Zachary Whiting had offered him mid-morning coffee and heard him out with not a single interruption. As Rob spoke, Whiting frowned in concern, but the frown turned out to be about Rob’s upset rather than about the questions he was asking or the demands for action he was making. At the conclusion of Rob’s recitation of concerns, Whiting had said, “Good God, it’s all in hand, Mr. Hastings. You should have been informed of this, and I can’t think why you weren’t.”

Rob wondered what was in hand, and this he asked, adding that there were train tickets, there was a hotel receipt. He knew that these had been given to Whiting and what had Whiting done about them? What had he done about Jossie, as a matter of fact?

Again, Whiting reassured him. What he meant when he said that things were in hand was that everything he-Whiting-knew, everything he had been told, and everything that had been handed to him was now in the possession of the Scotland Yard detectives who’d come down to Hampshire in connection with the London murder enquiry. That meant the tickets and the hotel receipt as well, Whiting told him. They were likely in London at this point, as he’d sent them up by special messenger. Mr. Hastings wasn’t to worry about that. If Gordon Jossie had perpetrated this crime against Mr. Hastings’s sister-

“If?” Rob had said.

– then Mr. Hastings could expect Scotland Yard to come calling again in very short order.

“I don’t understand why the London police and not you lot here-”

Whiting held up his hand. He said it was a complicated matter because more than one police jurisdiction was involved. As to why it was Scotland Yard looking into matters and not the locals from where Mr. Hastings’ sister had been killed, he couldn’t say. That was likely due to some political situation up in London. But what Whiting could say was that the reason the Hampshire constabulary was not handling the case had to do with this being a killing that had not occurred in Hampshire in the first place. The Hampshire police would cooperate and were cooperating fully with London, naturally. That meant handing over whatever they had or were given or what they learned, and once again he wanted to assure Mr. Hastings that this had been done and was continuing to be done.

“Jossie admits to being in London,” Rob told Whiting again. “I spoke to him myself. The bastard admits it.”

And that, too, would be transmitted to the London police. There would be someone brought to justice, Mr. Hastings. That was likely to happen in very short order.

Whiting personally ushered Rob to the reception area at the end of their meeting. He introduced him along the way to the duty press officer, to the sergeant in charge of the custody suite, and to two special constables who liaised with the community.

In reception, Whiting informed the special on duty that until an arrest had been made in the London murder of Jemima Hastings, whenever her brother needed to see the chief superintendent, he was to be given access. Rob appreciated all of this. It went a great way towards soothing his mind.

He returned to his home and hooked up the horse trailer. With Frank as his companion-head hanging out of the window, tongue and ears flapping-he trundled from Burley along the lanes to Sway and from there to Gordon Jossie’s holding. The narrowness of the roads and the fact of the horse trailer made the going slow, but it was of no account. He didn’t expect Gordon Jossie to be on the property at this time of day.