Elizabeth George - This Body of Death

“She seems a decent sort.”

Barbara wondered what that meant, but she didn’t ask. It wasn’t her business, she told herself, even as it felt like her business in every way.

She brought up the reason for her call: Chief Superintendent Zachary Whiting, the forged letters from Winchester Technical College II, and Whiting’s knowledge of Gordon Jossie’s apprenticeship in Itchen Abbas with Ringo Heath. She said, “We didn’t mention any apprenticeship, let alone where it was, so why would he know about it? Does he keep his fingers on the pulse of every individual in the whole bloody New Forest? Seems to me there’s something going on with Whiting and this Jossie bloke, sir, because Whiting definitely knows more than he’s willing to tell us.”

“What are you considering?”

“Something illegal. Whiting taking payoffs for whatever Jossie’s doing when he’s not off thatching old buildings. He’s working on people’s houses, Jossie is. He sees what’s inside them, and some of them will have valuables. This isn’t exactly a poverty-stricken part of the country, sir.”

“Burglaries orchestrated by Jossie and discovered by Whiting? Pocketing ill-gotten gains instead of making an arrest?”

“Or could be they’re into something together.”

“Something that Jemima Hastings discovered?”

“That’s definitely a possibility. So I’m wondering…Could you do some checking on him? Bit of snooping. Background and such. Who is this bloke Zachary Whiting? Where’d he do his police training? Where’d he come from before he ended up here?”

“I’ll see what I can sort out,” Lynley said.

WHILE ALL ROADS weren’t exactly leading to Gordon Jossie, Barbara thought, they were certainly circling the bloke. It was time to see what the rest of the team in London had come up with when checking on him-not to mention when checking on every other name she’d handed over-so after breakfast when she and Winston were making their preparations for the day, she took out her mobile to make the call.

It rang before she had a chance. The caller was Isabelle Ardery. Her remarks were brief, of the pack-up-and-come-home variety. They had a solid suspect, they had what was undoubtedly the murder weapon; they had his shoes and his clothing, which were going to test positive for Jemima’s blood; they had an established connection between them.

“And he’s a nutter,” Ardery concluded. “Schizophrenic who won’t take meds.”

“He can’t be tried, then,” Barbara said.

“Trying him’s hardly the point, Sergeant,” Ardery told her. “Getting him permanently off the street is.”

“Understood. But there’s more than one curious person down this way, guv,” Barbara told her. “I mean, just considering Jossie, f’r instance, you might want us to stay and nose round till we-”

“What I want is your return to London.”

“C’n I ask where we are with the background checks?”

“So far there’s nothing questionable on anyone,” Ardery told her. “Especially not down there. Your holiday’s over. Get back to London. Today.”

“Right.” Barbara ended the call and made a face at the phone. She knew an order when she heard an order. She wasn’t convinced, however, that the order made sense.

“So?” Winston said to her.

“That’s definitely the question of the hour.”

ALTHOUGH BELLA MCHAGGIS LIKED TO THINK THAT HER lodgers would scrupulously do their own recycling, she’d learned over time that they were far more likely to toss items into the rubbish. So weekly, she made rounds inside her house. She found broadsheets and tabloids piled here and there, old magazines under beds, Coke cans crushed inside wastepaper baskets, and all sorts of otherwise valuable articles in nearly every location.

It was for this reason that she emerged from her house with a laundry basket whose contents she intended to deposit among the many receptacles she had long ago placed in her front garden for this purpose. On the step, however, basket in arms, Bella halted abruptly. For after their previous encounter, the last person she expected to see just inside her front gate was Yolanda the Pyschic. She was in the midst of waving in the air what looked like a large green cigar. A plume of smoke rose from it, and as she waved it, Yolanda chanted sonorously in her husky masculine tone.

This was the bloody limit, Bella thought. She dropped her basket and yelped, “You! What the bloody hell will it take? Get off my property this instant.”

Yolanda’s eyes had been shut, but they flew open. She appeared to shake off some trance she was in. That was likely another one of her completely spurious performances, Bella thought. The woman was an utter charlatan.

Bella kicked the laundry basket to one side and strode over to the psychic, who was holding her ground. “Did you hear me?” she demanded. “Leave the property this instant or I’ll have you arrested. And stop waving that…that thing in my face.”

Closer to it now, Bella saw that that thing was a collection of pale leaves, rolled tightly and bound up with thin twine. Its smoke was, frankly, not bad smelling, more like incense than tobacco. But that was hardly the point.

“Black as the night,” was Yolanda’s reply. Her eyes looked odd, and Bella wondered if the woman was high on drugs. “Black as the night and the sun, the sun.” Yolanda waved her stick of smoking whatever-it-was directly in Bella’s face. “Ooze from the windows. Ooze from the doors. Purity is needed or the evil within-”

“Oh for God’s sake,” Bella snapped. “Don’t pretend you’re here for anything other than causing trouble.”

Yolanda continued to wave the smoking object like a priestess in the performance of an arcane rite. Bella grabbed her arm and attempted to hold it in place. She was surprised to find the psychic was quite strong, and for a moment they stood there like two ageing female wrestlers, each trying to throw the other to the mat. Bella finally won, for which she was thankful as it did her good to see that her hours of yoga and athletic training were doing something besides lengthening her life on this miserable planet. She mastered Yolanda’s arm, lowered it, and knocked the green cigar from her hand. She stamped upon it till it was extinguished while Yolanda moaned, mumbled, and murmured about God, purity, evil, black, the night, and the sun.

“Oh, stop your nonsense.” Yolanda’s arm still in her grasp, Bella began to march her towards the gate.

Yolanda, however, had other things on her mind. She put on the metaphorical brakes. Legs as stiff as a two-year-old’s in the midst of a tantrum, she planted herself firmly and would not be budged.

“This is a place of evil,” she hissed. To Bella, the woman’s expression looked wild. “If you won’t purify, then you must leave. What happened to her will happen again. All of you are in danger.”

Bella rolled her eyes.

“Listen to me!” Yolanda cried. “He died within, and when that happens in a place of abode-”

“Oh rubbish. Stop pretending you’re here to do anything other than spy and cause trouble. Which you’ve done from the first and don’t deny it. What do you want now? Who do you want now? Looking to talk someone else out of living here? Well, there’s no one else yet. Are you satisfied? Now, get the hell-Be gone before I phone the police.”

It seemed that the idea of police finally got through. Yolanda immediately stopped resisting and allowed herself to be propelled towards the gate. But still she nattered on about death and the need for a ritual of purification. Bella was able to determine from Yolanda’s rambling that all of this was due to the untimely passing of Mr. McHaggis, and truth to tell, the fact that Yolanda seemed to know about McHaggis’s death inside the house did give Bella pause. But she shook off the pause-because, obviously, Jemima could have told her about McHaggis’s death since Bella herself had mentioned it more than once-and with no further conversation between them, she directed Yolanda from the property to the pavement.