Elizabeth George - This Body of Death

Whiting lowered the zip on his trousers. He said, “Consider it this way, laddie. I reckon you’ve taken it in the arse but I don’t fancy that. The other will do. Come along and be a good boy, eh? Then we’ll call it quits, you and I. Off you’ll go with no one the wiser. About anything, my dear.”

Gordon knew he could end it-now, in this moment, and forever. But the aftermath of doing so would end him as well, and his cowardice was that he could not cope with that. He simply lacked the bottle. That was who he was and who he had always been.

How long would it take and what would it cost him to perform for Whiting? Surely, he thought, he could live through this when he’d lived through everything else.

He turned in his seat. He glanced back at Tess. Her head was on her paws, her eyes gazed at him mournfully, her tail wagged slowly. He said to Whiting, “The dog goes with me.”

“Whatever you like.” Whiting smiled.

MEREDITH’S HANDS WERE slick on the steering wheel. Her heart was pounding. She couldn’t catch her breath. The bloke had something poked into her side-the same something sharp that he’d likely been holding in readiness when she’d stupidly broken into Gina Dickens’s bed-sitting room-and he murmured, “How d’you reckon it feels when it pierces the flesh?” in reference to it.

She hadn’t a clue who he was. But he, evidently, knew exactly who she was because he called her by name. He’d said within moments and into her ear, “And this must be Meredith Powell, who pinched my pretty gold coin. I’ve been hearing about you, Meredith, I have. But sure I didn’t expect we’d ever get the chance to become acquainted.”

She’d said, “Who are you?” and even as she’d said it, she knew there was something familiar about him.

“That,” he said, “is one of those need-to-know questions, Meredith. And you, as it happens, don’t need to know.”

The voice. She’d heard enough at that point to connect him to the phone call she’d intercepted in Gina’s bed-sitting room. She’d thought at the time it was Chief Superintendent Whiting-when she’d thought at all, she concluded bitterly-but this had to be the man who’d placed that phone call. The voice seemed right.

“Your arrival changes the nature of things a wee bit,” he’d said to her.

So they had gone to her car. Her mind began racing when he forced her into the driver’s seat. He said she was to take them to Gordon Jossie’s property, so first she concluded that here was the answer: this bloke and Gordon in cahoots and Jemima dying because she’d discovered it. That, however, brought up the question of Gina Dickens and how she fitted in, which forced Meredith to decide that it was Gina and this bloke who were in cahoots. But that brought up the question of who Gina was, which brought up the question of who Gordon was, which brought up the question of where Chief Superintendent Whiting fitted in since, according to Michele Daugherty, it was Jossie’s name that had brought Whiting to her office making whatever threats he’d made. And that brought up the question of whether Michele Daugherty herself was involved because perhaps she was a liar as well since it seemed they all were liars.

Oh God, oh God, oh God, Meredith thought. She should have gone into work at Gerber & Hudson that day.

She considered driving wildly round Hampshire instead of heading to Gordon’s holding when the man told her to take him there. She reckoned if she drove fast enough and wildly enough, there was a chance that she could attract the attention of someone-a policeman out on patrol definitely wouldn’t have gone amiss-and save herself that way. But there was that thing poked into her side and the suggestion it made of a slow and painful entry somewhere in the vicinity of…what? Was it her liver down there? Where were her kidneys, exactly? And how much did it hurt to be stabbed? Was she enough of a heroine to undergo…and if she did…but would he really stab her if she was driving the car…and what if she drove erratically and he told her to stop and then he marched her into the woods…into one of hundreds upon hundreds of woods…How long would it take someone to find her while she slowly bled to death? Like Jemima had done. Oh God oh God oh God.

“You killed her!” She blurted it out. She hadn’t intended to. She’d intended to remain calm. Sigourney Weaver in that old film about the space creature. Even older, ancient even, telly shows featuring Diana Rigg in her high-heeled boots kicking bad guys in the teeth. What would they do in this situation? she wondered ridiculously. What would Sigourney and Diana do? Easy for them because it was all in the script, and the alien, the bad guy, the monster, whatever…It always dies at the end, doesn’t it? Only Jemima was already dead and, “You killed her! You killed her!” Meredith shouted.

The deadly point of his weapon pressed harder against her. “Drive,” he said. “Killing, I’ve found, is rather easier than I thought it would be.”

She thought of Cammie. Her vision went blurry. She got a grip. She would do what was asked and what was necessary in order to get back to Cammie.

She said, “I’ve a little girl. She’s five years old. Do you have children?”

He said, “Drive.”

“What I mean is you have to let me go. Cammie doesn’t have another parent. Please. You don’t want to do this to my little girl.”

She glanced at him. He was dark like a Spaniard, and his face was pockmarked. His eyes were brown. They were fixed on her. They held nothing. They were, she realised, like gazing at a blackboard.

She looked away and kept her attention on the road, then. She began to pray.

BARBARA RECKONED THAT if the other car was heading to Gordon Jossie’s holding-as it apparently was since she could come up with no other reason that it had turned towards Sway-Gina Dickens had to be there. Or Georgina Francis. Or whoever the bloody hell she was. In the middle of the day, they wouldn’t be taking a trek out to Jossie’s property in order to meet Jossie himself, who would be at work. Instead, they were on their way to meet someone else, and that person had to be Gina/Georgina. All Barbara needed to do was to follow at a safe distance, to make certain they ended up where she suspected they would, and then to ring for backup if it looked as though she wasn’t going to be able to deal with them by herself.

If she moved too soon against Frazer Chaplin, then it stood to reason Georgina Francis would get away. In this part of the country that would not be difficult. Reaching the Isle of Wight took only a ferry ride. Reaching its airport from Yarmouth would not be difficult. Southampton was no great distance, either. Nor was Southampton’s airport. So she had to be cautious. The last thing she wanted was to play her hand too soon.

Her mobile rang again. I love you, Peggy Sue. She glanced at the phone’s screen and saw it was Lynley, no doubt ringing because he assumed they’d been cut off earlier. She let her voice mail take the message as she kept driving.

The Polo ahead of her made a turn into the first of the narrow lanes that led in the end to Gordon Jossie’s cottage. They were less than two minutes from their destination now, and when they reached it and the car ahead turned into Gordon Jossie’s drive, Barbara was unsurprised.

She zipped past-just another car in the lane as far as they were concerned, she hoped-and she found a spot farther along the way where she crammed her Mini into an opening provided by the access into a local farm’s field. There she parked, grabbed up her mobile phone in a bow to cooperating with her superior officers-although she was careful to switch it off-and hurried back in the direction from which she’d come.

She reached Jossie’s cottage first, not his driveway. The hawthorn hedge hid the dwelling from the lane, but it also provided her a shelter from being seen. She crept along it far enough to gain a view of the driveway and at least part of the west paddock beyond it. She saw that Frazer Chaplin and his companion had entered that paddock and were crossing it. They passed out of her field of vision, though, within ten yards.