Elizabeth George - This Body of Death

The verdict of guilty took only four hours. The decision on punishment would take two weeks.

THE PONY LAY THRASHING ON THE GROUND ON MILL LANE, which was just outside Burley. It writhed on the ground with both of its back legs broken, desperately attempting to rise and run from the group of people who gathered at the rear end of the car that had hit it. Every few moments it shrieked horribly as it arched its back and flailed its legs.

Robbie Hastings pulled over to the narrow bit of verge. He told Frank to stay, and he got out of the vehicle and into the noise: pony, conversation, cries. As he approached the scene, one of the group broke away and strode to meet him, a man in jeans, Wellingtons, and T-shirt. The jeans were worn and stained brown at the knees.

Rob recognised him from his occasional nights at the Queen’s Head. Billy Rodin, he was called, and he worked as a full-time gardener at one of the large homes along the road. Rob didn’t know which one.

“American.” Billy winced at the noise from the stallion and jerked his thumb at the rest of the group. There were four of them: two middle-aged couples. One of the women was crying, and the other had turned her back on the scene and was biting her hand. “Got confused, is what happened.”

“Wrong side of the road?”

“’Bout it, yeah. Car coming towards’m too fast round that curve.” Billy gestured the way Rob himself had come. “Startled them. They veered right instead of left and then tried to correct, and the stallion was there. Wanted to give ’em a piece of my mind, but lookit ’em, eh?”

“Where’s the other vehicle?”

“Just kept going.”

“Number plates?”

“Didn’t get ’em. I was over there.” Billy pointed towards one of the many brick walls on the lane, this one some fifty yards away.

Rob nodded and went to look at the stallion. The pony screamed. One of the two American men came towards him. He wore dark glasses and a golf shirt with a logo, Bermuda shorts, and sandals. He said, “God damn, I’m sorry. C’n I help you get him into the trailer or something?”

Rob said, “Eh?”

“The trailer. Maybe if we support his rump…?”

Rob realised that the man actually thought he’d brought the horse trailer for this poor creature on the ground in front of them, perhaps to drive him to some veterinary surgery. He shook his head. “Got to destroy him.”

“We can’t…? There’s no vet around? Oh shit. Oh damn. Did that guy tell you what happened? There was this other car and I totally blew it because-”

“He told me.” Rob squatted to take a closer look at the pony, whose eyes were rolling and from whose mouth a froth was issuing. He hated the fact that it was one of the stallions. He recognised this one since he and three others had only been moved into Rob’s area to service the mares this past year: a strong young bay with a blaze on his forehead. He should have lived more than twenty years.

“Listen, do we have to stay while you…?” the man asked. “I only want to know because Cath is upset enough and if she has to watch you kill that horse…She’s a real animal person. This pretty much ruins our vacation anyway-not to mention the front end of the car-and we only got to England three days ago.”

“Go into the village.” Rob told the man how to get there. “Wait for me at the Queen’s Head. You’ll see it on the right. I expect there’re phone calls you need to make anyway, about the car.”

“Look, how bad a trouble’re we in? C’n I make this right somehow?”

“You’re not in trouble. There are just formalities-”

The pony neighed wildly. It sounded like a scream.

“Do something, do something,” one of the women cried.

The American nodded and said, “Queen’s Head. Okay,” and then to the others, “Come on. Let’s go.”

They made short work of vacating the scene, leaving Rob, the stallion, and Billy Rodin on the side of the lane. “Worst part of the job, eh?” Billy said. “Poor dumb brute.”

Rob wasn’t sure which of them the phrase suited best: the American, the stallion, or himself. He said, “Happens too often, especially in summer.”

“Need my help?”

Rob told him he didn’t. He would dispatch the poor animal and ring New Forest Hounds to pick up the body. “You needn’t stay,” he told him.

“Right then,” Billy Rodin said, and he headed back to the gardening from which he’d come on the run.

This left Rob to deal with the stallion, and he went to his Land Rover to fetch the pistol. Two ponies in less than a week, he thought. Things were getting worse and worse. His charge was to protect the animals on the forest-especially the ponies-but he didn’t see how he could do it if people didn’t learn to value them. He didn’t blame the poor foolish Americans. Likely they hadn’t been driving fast anyway. Here to see the countryside and to gawk at its beauties, they might have been momentarily distracted by one vista or another, but he suspected that had it not been for the surprise of the other vehicle coming at them, none of this would have happened. He told Frank once more to stay as he jerked open the Land Rover’s door and reached in the back.

The pistol was gone. He saw this at once, and for an unnerving moment, he thought ridiculously that somehow one of the Americans had got it since they’d driven right by the Land Rover on their way towards Burley. Then he thought of the children at Gritnam while he was unloading the two ponies into the woodland just a short time ago. That consideration made his stomach churn and drove him to thrust himself into the Land Rover and begin a frantic search. He always kept the pistol secured behind the driver’s seat in a disguised holster fashioned for just this purpose, but it wasn’t there. It hadn’t fallen to the floor, it wasn’t under the seat, nor was it under the passenger’s seat. He thought about the last time he’d used it-the day the two Scotland Yard detectives had found him on the side of the road with another injured pony-and he considered briefly that one of them…perhaps the black man because he was black…And then he realised how horrible a thought it was and what it said about him that he even considered it…and behind him the stallion continued to thrash and shriek.

He grabbed up the shotgun. God, he didn’t want to have to do it this way, but he had no choice. He loaded the thing and approached the poor pony, but all the time his mind was feverishly casting up images of the past few days, of all the people who’d been near enough to the Land Rover…

He should have been removing the pistol and the shotgun from the vehicle every evening. He’d been too distracted: Meredith, the Scotland Yard detectives, his own visit to the local police, Gordon Jossie, Gina Dickens…When had he last removed the pistol and the shotgun as he was meant to do anyway? He couldn’t say.

But there was a single certainty and he damn well knew it. He had to find that gun.

MEREDITH POWELL FACED her boss, but she couldn’t look at him. He was in the right and she was in the wrong and there were no two ways about it. She had been off her stride. She had been enormously distracted. She had been ducking out of the office on the least pretext. She certainly couldn’t deny any of this, so what she did was nod. She felt as humiliated as she’d ever felt, even in the worst moments all those years ago in London when she’d had to face the fact that the man to whom she’d given her love had been merely a worthless object of a feminine fantasy long fed by the cinema, by certain novels, and by advertising agencies.

“So I want to see a change,” Mr. Hudson was saying as a conclusion to his remarks. “Can you guarantee a change, Meredith?”