This Body of Death

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’d want me to prove it.”

  “Can’t you? Why would you not be able to prove … ? Did you not go to Holland, Gordon?”

  “Of course I went. But I tossed the ticket.”

  “But there’re records. All sorts of records. And there’s the hotel. And whoever you saw …the farmer …whoever …Who grows the reeds? He’ll be able to say …You can phone the police and just tell them the truth and that’ll be the end …”

  “It’s easier like this.”

  “How on earth can it be easier to ask Cliff to lie? Because if he lies and if they find out that he lied … ?”

  Now she did look frightened, but frightened was something that he could deal with. Frightened was something he understood. He approached her the way he approached the ponies in the paddock, one hand out and the other visible: No surprises here, Gina, nothing to fear.

  He said, “Can you trust me on this? Do you trust me?”

  “Of course I trust you. Why shouldn’t I trust you? But I don’t understand …”

  He touched her bare shoulder. “You’re here with me. You’ve been with me …what? A month? Longer? Are you thinking I would’ve hurt Jemima? Gone up to London? Found her wherever she was and stabbed her to death? Is that how I seem to you? That sort of bloke? He goes to London, murders a woman for no real reason since she’s already long gone out of his life, then comes home and makes love to this woman, this woman right here, the centre of his whole flaming world? Why? Why?”

  “Let me look at your eyes.” She reached up and took off his dark glasses, which he hadn’t removed on coming into the barn. She set them on the brushing table and then she put her hand on his cheek. He met her gaze. She looked at him and he didn’t flinch and finally her expression softened. She kissed his cheek and then his closed eyelids. Then she kissed his mouth. Then her own mouth opened, and her hands went down to his arse and she pulled him close.

  After a moment, breathless, she said, “Take me right here,” and he did so.

  THEY FOUND ROBBIE Hastings between Vinney Ridge and Anderwood, which were two stopping-off spots on the Lyndhurst Road between Burley and the A35. They had reached him on his mobile, from a number that Gordon Jossie had given them. “He’ll doubtless tell you the worst about me,” Jossie said abruptly.

  It was no easy matter to locate Jemima Hastings’ brother since so many roads in the New Forest had convenient names but no signs. They finally discovered exactly where he was by chance, having stopped at a cottage where the road they were taking made a dogleg, only to discover it was called Anderwood Cottage. By heading farther along the route, they were led to believe by the cottage owner, they would locate Rob Hastings on a track leading to Dames Slough Inclosure. He was an agister, they were told, and he’d been called to do “the usual bit of sad business.”

  This business turned out to be the shooting of one of the New Forest ponies that had been hit by a car on A35. The poor animal had apparently managed to stagger across acres of heath before collapsing. When Barbara and Nkata found the agister, he’d put the horse to death with one merciful shot from a .32 pistol, and he’d brought the animal’s body to the edge of the lane. He was talking on his mobile, and sitting attentively next to him was a majestic-looking Weimaraner, so well trained as to ignore not only the interlopers but also the dead pony lying a short distance from the Land Rover in which Robbie Hastings had apparently come to this lonely spot.

  Nkata pulled off the lane as far as he was able. Hastings nodded as they approached him. They’d told him only that they wanted to speak with him at once, and he looked grave. It was hardly likely that he had many calls from the Metropolitan police in this part of the world.

  He said, “Stay, Frank,” to the dog and came towards them. “You might want to keep back from the pony. It’s not a happy sight.” He said he was waiting for the New Forest Hounds and then added, “Ah. Here he is,” in reference to an open-bed lorry that rumbled towards them. It was pulling a low trailer with shallow sides, and into this the dead animal was going to be loaded. It would be used for meat to feed the dogs, Robbie Hastings informed them as the lorry got into position. At least some good would come of the reckless stupidity of drivers who thought the Perambulation was their personal playground, he added.

  Barbara and Nkata had already decided there was no way that they were going to inform Robbie Hastings of his sister’s death on the side of a country road. But they had also reckoned that their very presence was likely to set the man on edge, and it did so. Once the pony was loaded and the lorry from New Forest Hounds had negotiated a difficult turn to get back to the main road, Hastings swung round to them and said, “What’s happened? It’s bad. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  Barbara said, “Is there somewhere we could have a conversation with you, Mr. Hastings?”

  Hastings touched the top of his dog’s smooth head. “Might tell me here,” he said. “There’s no place nearby for private talk ’less you want to go into Burley, and you don’t want that, not at this time of year.”

  “Do you live nearby?”

  “Beyond Burley.” He took off the baseball cap he was wearing, revealing a head of close-cropped hair. This was graying and would have been thick otherwise, and he used a kerchief he had round his neck to scrub over his face. His face was singularly unattractive, with large buckteeth and virtually no chin. His eyes, however, were deeply human and they filled with tears as he looked at them. He said, “So she’s dead, eh?” and when Barbara’s expression told him this was so, he gave a terrible cry and turned from them.

  Barbara exchanged a look with Nkata. Neither of them moved at first. Then Nkata was the one to put his hand on Hastings’ shoulder and the one to say, “We’re that sorry, mon. ’S bad when someone goes like this.”

  He himself was upset. Barbara knew this from the way Nkata’s accent altered, becoming less South London and more Caribbean, with the th’s morphing into d’s. He said, “I’m drivin’ you home. Sergeant here, she follow in my car. You tell me how to go, we get you there. No way you need to be out here now. You good to tell me how to get t’your place?”

  “I can drive,” Hastings said.

  “No way you’re doing that, mon.” Nkata jerked his head at Barbara and she hastened to open the Land Rover’s passenger door. On its seat were a shotgun and the pistol the man had used to shoot the pony. She moved these beneath the seat and together she and Nkata got Hastings inside. His dog followed: one graceful leap and Frank was leaning against his master in the silent way all dogs have of comforting.

  They made a sad little procession out of the area, proceeding not back the way they had come but rather farther along the lane through a woodland of oaks and chestnuts. These afforded a canopy that arced over the lane in a verdant tunnel of leaves. Back out on the Lyndhurst Road, though, there was broad lawn on one side giving way to tangled heath on the other. Herds of ponies grazed freely here, and where they wished to cross the road, they simply did so.

  Once in Burley, it became quickly clear why Hastings had said they would not want to have a private conversation there. Tourists were massing everywhere, and they seemed to be taking their cues from the ponies and the cows wandering through the village at will: They walked where their fancy took them, bright sunlight falling upon their shoulders.

  Hastings lived through and beyond the village. He had a holding at the top of a strip of road called Honey Lane—actually marked with a sign, Barbara noted—and when they finally pulled onto the property, she saw it was similar to a farm, with several outbuildings and paddocks, one of which held two horses.

  The door they used led directly into the kitchen of the house, where Barbara went to an electric kettle upended on a draining board. She filled it, set it to work, and sorted out mugs and bags of PG Tips. Sometimes a shot of the bloody national beverage was the only way in which fellow feeling could be expressed.

  Nkata sat Hastings at an old Formica-topp
ed table, where the agister took off his hat and blew his nose on his kerchief, which he then balled up and shoved to one side. He said, “Sorry,” and his eyes filled. “I should have known when she didn’t answer my calls on her birthday. And not ringing back at once th’ day afterwards. She always rang back. Within the hour, generally. When she didn’t, it was easier to think she was just busy. Caught up in things. You know.”

  “Are you married, Mr. Hastings?” Barbara brought mugs to the table, along with a battered tin canister of sugar that she’d found on a shelf with matching old canisters of flour and coffee as well. It was an old-fashioned kitchen with old-fashioned contents, from the appliances to the objects on the shelves and in the cupboards. As such, it looked like a room that had been lovingly preserved, rather than one that had been artfully restored to wear the guise of an earlier period.

  “Not very likely, that,” was how he answered the question. It seemed to be a resigned and bleak reference to his unfortunate looks. That was sad, Barbara thought, a self-prophecy fulfilled.

  “Ah,” she said. “Well, we’re going to want to speak to everyone in Hampshire who knew Jemima. We hope you’ll be able to help us with that.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because of how she died, Mr. Hastings.”

  At this point Hastings seemed to realise something he hadn’t yet considered despite the fact that he was being spoken to by representatives of the Metropolitan police. He said, “Her death …Jemima’s death …”

  “I’m very sorry to tell you that she was murdered six days ago.” Barbara added the rest: not the means of death but the place in which it had occurred. And even then she kept it general, by mentioning the cemetery but not its location and not the location of the body within it. She finished with, “So everyone who knew her will have to be interviewed.”

  “Jossie.” Hastings sounded numb. “She left him. He didn’t like that. She said he couldn’t come to terms with it. He rang her and rang her and he wouldn’t stop ringing her.” That said, he raised his fists to his eyes, and he wept like a child.

  The electric kettle clicked off, and Barbara went to fetch it. She poured water into the mugs, and she found milk in the fridge. A shot or two of whisky would have been better for the poor man, but she wasn’t up to rustling through his cupboards, so the tea was going to have to do, despite the heat of the day. At least the interior of the cottage was cool and kept that way by its construction of thick cob walls, which were rough and whitewashed outside and painted pale yellow within the kitchen.

  It was the presence of the Weimaraner that seemed to soothe Robbie Hastings at last. The dog had placed his head on Hastings’ thigh, and the low, long whine that issued from the animal roused the master. Robbie Hastings wiped his eyes and blew his nose again. He said, “Aye, Frank,” and he cupped his hand over the dog’s smooth head. He lowered his own head and pressed his lips to the animal. He didn’t look at either Barbara or Nkata when he raised his head again. Instead he stared at the mug of tea.

  Perhaps knowing what their questions were going to be, he began to talk, slowly at first, then with more reassurance. Next to him, Nkata took out his notebook.

  At Longslade Bottom, Hastings began, there was a wide expanse of lawn where people went regularly to exercise their dogs off lead. He took his own dog there one day several years back and Jemima went along. That’s where she met Gordon Jossie. This would have been round three years ago.

  “Somewhat new to the area, he was,” Hastings said. “Broken away from a master thatcher round Itchen Abbas—a bloke called Heath—and come down the New Forest to start his own business. Never had much to say, but Jemima fancied him at once. Well, she would do, wouldn’t she, ’cause she was tweenem at that point.”

  Barbara frowned, wondering at the expression. She reckoned it was some strange Hampshirean term. “‘Tweenem?’”

  “’Tween men,” he clarified. “Jemima always liked to have a partner. From the time she was …I don’t know …twelve or thirteen? …She wanted boyfriends. I always reckoned it was our dad’s dying like he did, mum ’s well. Killed in a car crash, both of them at once. Made her think she had to have someone that was truly and permanently hers, I think.”

  “More ’n yourself,” Nkata clarified.

  “I reckon it seemed to Jemima that she needed someone more special. I was her brother, see. Didn’t mean anything if her brother loved her since he was meant to love her.” Hastings pulled the mug towards him. A bit of tea sloshed onto the table. He smeared this with the palm of his hand.

  “Was she promiscuous?” Barbara asked, adding when the agister looked at her sharply, “Sorry, but I have to ask. And it doesn’t matter, Mr. Hastings. Only as it might relate to her death.”

  He shook his head. “To her, it was all about being in love with some bloke. Given, she partnered up with one or two eventually—if you know what I mean—but only if she thought they were in love. ‘Madly in love’ was what she always called it. ‘We’re madly in love with each other, Rob.’ Typical young girl, you ask me. Well …nearly.”

  “Nearly?” Barbara and Nkata spoke simultaneously.

  Hastings looked thoughtful, as if examining his sister in a new light. He said slowly, “She did cling, I s’pose. And could be that made it hard for her to hold on to a boy. Same with men. She wanted a bit too much from them, I think, and that would …well, it would eventually end things. I wasn’t much good at it, but I’d try to explain things to her: how blokes don’t like someone holding on to them so. But I reckon she felt alone in the world ’cause of our parents, though she wasn’t alone, not ever, not the way you’d think. But feeling that way, she had to stop the …the aloneness. She wanted to—” He frowned and seemed to consider how to put his next remarks. “It was a bit like she wanted to climb into their skin, get that close to them, be them in a manner of speaking.”

  “A stranglehold?” Barbara said.

  “She didn’t intend it, never. But, aye, I s’pose that’s what happened. And when a bloke wanted his bit of space, Jemima couldn’t cope. She clung all the tighter. I expect they felt like they had no air, so they sloughed her off. She’d cry a bit, then she’d blame them for not being what she really wanted, and she’d go on to another.”

  “But this didn’t happen with Gordon Jossie?”

  “The strangling part?” He shook his head. “With him, she got as close as she wanted. He seemed to like it.”

  “How did you feel about him?” Barbara asked. “And about her being involved with him?”

  “I wanted to like him ’cause he made her happy, ’s well as one person can make another happy, you know. But there was something about him didn’t ever strike me right. He wasn’t much like blokes round here. I wanted her to find someone, settle down, make a family for herself as that’s what she wanted, and I didn’t see it as something could happen with him. Mind, I didn’t tell her so. Wouldn’t have made a difference if I had.”

  “Why not?” Nkata asked. He had not, Barbara noted, touched his tea. But then Winston had never been much of a tea man. Lager was more his thing, but not a lot of it. Winston was nearly as abstemious as a monk: little drinking, no smoking, his body a temple.

  “Oh, when she was ‘madly in love,’ the deal was sealed. There’d have been no point. Anyway I reckoned it was nothing to worry over ’cause Jemima’d likely run through him like she’d done the others. A few months and things would be over and she’d be searching for a man again. That didn’t happen, though. Soon enough she was spending whole nights with him in his lodgings. Then they found that property over Paul’s Lane, and they snapped it up and set up house and that was that. Well, I wasn’t ’bout to say anything then. I just hoped for the best. It looked like that’s what happened for a time. Jemima seemed quite happy. Starting her business with them cupcakes and all, over Ringwood. And he was building his thatching business. They seemed good with each other.”

  “Cupcake business?” Nkata asked the question. “What’d
that be?”

  “The Cupcake Queen. Sounds daft, eh? But thing is, she was that good in the kitchen, quite a hand with baking, Jemima. She had a score of customers buying cupcakes off her, fancy decorated and the like, special occasions, holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, gatherings. Worked herself up to being able to open a business of it in Ringwood—that would be the Cupcake Queen—and it was doing good, but then it all came to naught ’cause she left Jossie and she left the area.”

  As Nkata noted this, Barbara said, “Gordon Jossie tells us he has no idea why Jemima left him.”

  Hastings snorted. “He told me he reckoned she had someone on the side and left him for that one.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “That she was going off to think.”

  “That’s all, is it?”

  “That’s the limit. That’s what she said. She needed time to think.” Hastings rubbed his hands on his face. “Thing is, I didn’t see that as bad, you know? That she wanted to go off? I reckoned that finally she didn’t want to rush things with some bloke, that she wanted to get herself sorted before she settled it permanently with someone. I thought it was a good idea.”

  “But she didn’t indicate anything more than that?”

  “Nothing more than she was going off to think. She stayed in touch with me regular. Got herself a new mobile and let me know she’d done it ’cause Gordon kept ringing her, but I didn’t consider what that could mean, see. Just that he wanted her back. Well, so did I.”

  “Did you?”

  “I bloody well did. She’s …She’s all I had in the way of family. I wanted her home.”

  “Here, you mean?” Barbara asked.

  “Just home. However she wanted that to mean. Long as it was Hampshire.”

  Barbara nodded and asked for a list of Jemima’s friends and acquaintances in the area, as best he could give it them. She also told him they would need—regretfully—to know his own whereabouts on the day his sister died. Last, they asked him what he knew of Jemima’s activities in London and he said that he knew little enough except that she had “someone up there, some new bloke that she was ‘madly in love with.’ As usual.”