This Body of Death

  She’d begged the rest of the day off. Splitting headache, the heat, and that time of the month. She’d work at home if they didn’t mind, where she could put a cold compress on her head. She nearly had most of the graphic done anyway. An hour more was all it would take to get it finished.

  That was fine with the boss and off she went, and when she got to Lyndhurst she parked by the New Forest Museum and walked the short distance up to the tea rooms on the high street. Midsummer, and Lyndhurst was thick with tourists. The town sat squarely in the centre of the Perambulation and was generally the first stop for visitors wishing to familiarise themselves with this part of Hampshire.

  Gina’s lodgings above the Mad Hatter Tea Rooms were accessed by a doorway that was separate from the tea rooms themselves, from which at this time of day the scent of baked goods rolled out onto the street. There were two lodging rooms only and since from one hip-hop music was blasting, Meredith chose the other. It was here she applied the knowledge she’d gained from watching police programmes on the telly. She used a credit card to ease the catch back. It took five tries and she was drenched in sweat—both from nerves and from the ambient temperature in the building—before she got inside. But when she managed it, she knew she’d made the right decision. For a mobile phone on the nightstand was ringing and as far as she was concerned, the ringing was fairly screaming clue.

  She made a dash for it. She picked it up. She said, “Yes?” with as much authority as she could muster and as breathlessly as she could manage, in order to disguise her voice. As she did this, she looked round the room. It was furnished simply: a bed, a chest of drawers, a bedside table, a desk, a wardrobe. There was a basin with a mirror above it, but no en suite bath. As the window was closed, it was deadly hot.

  There was silence on the other end of the phone. She thought she’d missed the call and she cursed to herself. Then a man’s voice said, “Babe, Scotland Yard’s been. How the hell much longer?” and she went cold from head to toe, as if a blast of refrigerated air had shot through the room.

  She said, “Who is this? Tell me who this is!”

  Silence in reply. Then, “Shit,” in a low mutter. And then nothing.

  She said, “Hello? Hello? Who is this?” but she knew that whoever it was, he had already disconnected himself from the call. She punched the send button to return the call, although she reckoned that the man on the other end would hardly answer. But she didn’t need him to do so. She needed only to see the number from which the call had come. What she got, though, was PRIVATE NUMBER printed on the small screen. Damn, she thought. Whoever he was, he was calling from a withheld number. When the call went through, it rang and rang, as she’d expected. No voice mail, no message. It had been a call from someone in cahoots with Gina Dickens.

  Meredith felt a surge of triumph at this knowledge. It proved that she’d been right from the first. She’d known that Gina Dickens was dirty. All that remained was to find out the real purpose of her presence in the New Forest, because no matter what Gina had declared about her programme to help girls at risk, Meredith didn’t buy it. As far as she was concerned, the only girl at risk had been Jemima.

  Through the walls of the room, the hip-hop music continued to thump. From below, the noise from the tea rooms rose. From without, the street noise reverberated through the windows: lorries passing through Lyndhurst High Street and grinding through their gears when they hit the gentle slope, cars heading for Southampton or Beaulieu, tour coaches the size of small cottages ferrying their passengers south to Brockenhurst or even as far as the port town of Lymington and an excursion over to the Isle of Wight. Meredith remembered how Gina had spoken of the cacophony in the street beneath her window. In this, at least, she had not been lying. But in other matters …Well, that was what Meredith was here to discover.

  She had to be quick. She was going from cold to hot again, and she knew she couldn’t risk opening a window and drawing attention to the room in this way. But the temperature made the air close and herself claustrophobic.

  She attacked the bedside table first. The clock radio upon it was tuned to Radio Five, which didn’t seem to indicate anything, and within the single drawer of the table there was nothing but a box of tissues and an old, opened package of Blu-Tac with a small chunk of it missing. On the shelf of the table was a stack of magazines, too ancient to have belonged to Gina Dickens, Meredith reckoned.

  In the wardrobe there were clothes, but not the quantity that one would associate with permanency. They were of good quality, though, in keeping with what Meredith had already seen Gina wearing. She had expensive taste. Nothing was trendy rubbish. But the clothes gave no other clue about their owner. They did make Meredith wonder how Gina expected to maintain her wardrobe on what Gordon Jossie made as a thatcher, but that was it.

  She had similar luck with the chest of drawers, where the one piece of information she gleaned was that Gina definitely did not buy her knickers at discount prices. They seemed to be silk or satin, at least six different colours and prints and each pair of knickers possessed a bra to match. Meredith allowed herself a moment of knicker envy before she looked through the rest of the drawers. She saw neatly folded T-shirts, jerseys, and a few scarves. That was it.

  The desk offered even less information. It displayed some tourist brochures in a wooden holder atop it and some exceedingly cheap stationery in its centre drawer along with two postcards featuring the Mad Hatter Tea Rooms. There was a single pen in a shallow depression within this drawer, but that was all. Meredith pushed it shut, sat on the desk chair, and thought about what she had seen.

  Virtually nothing of use. Gina had nice clothes, she liked nice knickers, and she had a mobile phone. Why she didn’t have that phone with her was an interesting point. Had she forgotten it? Did she not want Gordon Jossie to know that she had it? Was she worried that possession of it would indicate something she didn’t wish him to know? Was she avoiding a caller to whom she didn’t wish to speak? Was she therefore on the run? The only way to get an answer to any of those questions was to ask her directly, which Meredith could hardly do without revealing she’d broken into her room, so she was out of luck.

  She gazed round the place. For want of anything else to do, she looked under the bed but was not surprised when she found nothing but a suitcase, which itself contained nothing. She even examined it for a false bottom—at this point feeling fairly ridiculous—but she came up empty-handed at that. She heaved herself to her feet, once again noting the closeness of the room. She thought about splashing some water on her face, and she reckoned it wouldn’t hurt to use the basin to revive herself but the water was tepid and would have needed running for several minutes to become cool enough to do any good.

  She patted her face on the hand towel provided, rehung it neatly on its rack, and then gave a closer look to the sink. It hung from the wall and was fairly modern in appearance. It was feminine as well, with flowers and vines painted onto the porcelain. Meredith ran her hand along it and then, thinking that as she’d noted it so also might have Gina, she ran her hand beneath it as well. Her fingers came to something that didn’t feel right. She squatted to have a better look.

  There, beneath the basin, something had been lodged with Blu-Tac. It appeared to be a small, taped and folded package made of paper. She eased it off the underside of the basin and carried it to the desk. Carefully, she removed both the tape and the Blu-Tac for future use.

  Unfolded, the paper turned out to be a piece of the room’s cheap stationery. It had been fashioned into something akin to a pouch and what that pouch held appeared to be a small medallion. Meredith would have vastly preferred a message, cryptic or otherwise. She would have liked to see “I asked Gordon Jossie to murder Jemima Hastings so that he would be free for me” although she would not have said no to, “I believe Gordon Jossie is a killer although I myself had nothing to do with it.” Instead what she had was a roundish object, looking as if it had been made as part of a metallurgy class. Clearly
, it was supposed to be a perfect circle, but it hadn’t quite made it. The metal in question looked like dirty gold, but it could have been anything that headed remotely in the direction of gold, as Meredith reckoned there weren’t a lot of classes on offer that allowed students to experiment with something so expensive.

  The thought of classes took her inexorably to Winchester, where Gina Dickens had come from. There seemed to be possible fruit to be borne from a fuller exploration of this. Meredith didn’t know whether this object actually belonged to Gina—nor had she the slightest idea why Gina or anyone else would have placed it beneath the basin—but the opened packet of Blu-Tac in the bedside table suggested it was hers. And as long as Gina’s ownership was a possibility, Meredith was not at a dead end in her investigation.

  The question now was whether to take the little medallion with her or try to remember what it looked like so that she could describe it later. She considered drawing it, and she even went to the desk, sat, and brought out a sheet of the cheap stationery to try her hand at sketching. The problem was that the workmanship wasn’t particularly clear, and while there seemed to be embossing on the thing, she couldn’t make any of it out very well. So it seemed to her that there was nothing for it but to engage in one small act of burglary. It was in a good cause, after all.

  WHEN GORDON JOSSIE arrived back at his holding, he found Gina in the last place he would ever have expected to see her: the west paddock. She was at the far side of it, and he might have missed her altogether had not one of the ponies whinnied, which directed his attention over to them. He saw the blond of Gina’s hair against the dark green backdrop of the wood in the distance. At first he thought she was merely walking on the far side of the paddock and beyond the fence, perhaps returning from a ramble in the trees. But when he climbed out of the pickup with Tess at his heels, he ventured over to the fence and found that Gina was actually within the paddock itself.

  This sent his hackles soaring. From the first, Gina had made a considerable topic out of her fear of the New Forest ponies. So to find her inside the paddock with them aroused the sleeping cobra of distrust within him.

  She hadn’t noticed his arrival. She was pacing along the line of the barbed-wire fencing, and she seemed intent upon ignoring the ponies as well as watching for their droppings or taking care with her footwork since she had her eyes on the ground.

  He called to her. She started, one hand clutching at the collar of her shirt. In the other hand she appeared to be carrying a map.

  She was wearing, he saw, her knee-high Wellingtons. This told him that whatever else she was doing, once again she was worried about adders. Briefly he thought about explaining to her that adders wouldn’t likely be in the paddock, that the paddock was not the heath. But this wasn’t a moment for explanations on his part. There was a question to be answered about what she was doing in the paddock in the first place and about the map she was holding. She smiled and waved and folded it. She said with a laugh, “You gave me quite a fright.”

  “What’re you doing?” He couldn’t help it: His voice was sharp. He made a concerted effort to soften it, but he didn’t quite manage to make his tone normal. “I thought ponies scared you.”

  She cast a look at the animals. They were meandering across the paddock in the direction of the water trough. Gordon gave it a look as he went over to the fence with Tess on his heels. The water was low, and he went for the hosepipe and unspooled it to the paddock. He entered, telling the dog to stay where she was—which she didn’t much like, pacing back and forth to show her displeasure—and he began topping up the trough.

  As he did this, Gina picked her way in his direction, but she didn’t do it by crossing directly over to him as another person might. Rather she went by way of the fence, keeping within inches of it as she moved along. She didn’t answer him till she’d reached the eastern part of the paddock in this diligent fashion.

  “You’ve found me out,” she said. “Pooh. I did so want to make it a surprise.” She cast a wary eye on the ponies. As she got closer to him, so also did she get closer to them.

  “What surprise?” he asked. “And is that a map? What’re you doing with a map? How c’n a map be part of a surprise?”

  She laughed. “Please. One thing at a time.”

  “Why’re you inside the paddock, Gina?”

  She observed him for a moment before she answered. Then she said with care, “Is something wrong? Should I not be in here?”

  “You said the New Forest ponies …You said that horses in general—”

  “I know what I said about horses. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t try to get over it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Gina reached his side before she replied again. She ran her hand through her sparkly hair. Despite his agitation, he liked to see her do this. He liked the way it fell back into place so perfectly no matter how she—or he—disheveled it. “Getting over an irrational fear,” she told him. “It’s called desensitisation. Haven’t you ever heard of people who get over their fears by being exposed to them?”

  “Bollocks. People don’t get over their fears.”

  She’d been smiling, but her smile faltered at his tone. She said, “What nonsense, Gordon. Of course they do, if they want to. They expose themselves to their fear in increments till they’re no longer afraid. Like getting over a fear of heights by slowly exposing oneself to progressively higher and higher places. Or getting over a fear of flying by getting used to the aeroplane jetway first, and then going to the doorway of the plane, and then just inside with the doors open, and then to the seats. Haven’t you heard of that?”

  “What’s that have to do with being in the paddock? And carrying a map with you. What the hell are you doing with a map?”

  She frowned outright then. She shifted her weight in that womanly way, one hip jutted out. She said, “Gordon, are you accusing me of something?”

  “Answer the question.”

  She looked as startled as she’d looked when he first called out her name. Only this time, he knew, it was because of how sharply he spoke to her.

  She said quietly, “I just explained it to you. I’m trying to get used to them by being in the paddock with them. Not close to them, but not on the other side of the fence either. I was going to stay there until they didn’t make me so nervous. Then I was going to take a step or two closer to them. That’s all.”

  “The map,” he said. “I want to know about the map.”

  “Good grief. I took it from my car, Gordon. It’s something to wave at them, to frighten them off if they got too close.”

  He said nothing in reply to this. She looked at him so closely that he turned his head to keep her from reading his expression. He felt his blood pulsing in his temples and he knew his face must be red and revealing.

  She said with what sounded like great care, “Are you aware that you’re acting like you suspect me of something?”

  Again, he made no reply. He wanted out of the paddock. He wanted her out of the paddock as well. He went to the gate and she followed him, saying, “What’s wrong, Gordon? Has something happened? Something else?”

  “What d’you mean?” he demanded, swinging to her. “What’s supposed to have happened?”

  “Well, heavens, I don’t know. But first that strange man came to speak with you. Then those detectives from Scotland Yard to tell you that Jemima—”

  “This isn’t about Jemima!” he cried.

  She gaped at him, then closed her mouth. She said, “All right. It’s not about Jemima. But you’re clearly upset and I can’t think it’s just that I went into the paddock to get used to the horses. Because that doesn’t make sense.”

  He forced out the words because he had to say something. “They’ve talked to Ringo. He phoned me about it.”

  “Ringo?” Clearly, she was nonplussed.

  “He gave them letters, and the letters are false. He didn’t know that, but they’ll suss it out. Then they’ll
be back here at the double. Cliff lied like I asked him to, but he’ll break if they press him. They’ll force the issue and he won’t hold out.”

  “Does any of that matter?”

  “Of course it matters!” He jerked the gate open. He’d forgotten about the dog. Tess raced inside and greeted Gina ecstatically. Seeing this, Gordon told himself that it had to mean something if Tess liked Gina. Tess read people well, and if she read Gina as decent and good, what else mattered?

  Gina knelt to rub the dog’s head. Tess wagged her tail and bumped closer to her for more. Gina looked up at him and said, “But you went to Holland. That’s all it was. If it comes to it, you can tell the police you lied because you don’t have the paperwork. And what does it matter anyway if you don’t have the itinerary or the ticket or whatever? You went to Holland, and you can prove it some way. Hotel records. Internet searches. The person you talked to about the reeds. Really, how difficult can it actually be?” And when he didn’t answer, “Gordon, wasn’t that the case? You were in Holland, weren’t you?”

  “Why d’you want to know?” He spoke explosively. It was the very last thing he intended, but he wouldn’t be pressed.

  She’d risen from the dog as she spoke, and she took a step away from him now. Her gaze drifted beyond him and he swung round to see who was there, but it was only her car she was looking at and it came to him that she was thinking about leaving. She seemed somehow to master this desire because once again she spoke calmly enough, although he could see from the way her mouth formed the words that she was on the alert and prepared to run from him. He wondered how they’d got to this point, but he knew at heart that this would always be the end point he reached with a woman. It might as well have been written in stone.