This Body of Death

  “If you thought that I’d hurt Jemima …”

  “Why on earth would I think that? You were through with each other, you and Jemima. You told me that and I believed you.”

  “It was true.”

  “Then … ?”

  He said nothing.

  She approached him. He could tell she was hesitant, as if he were an anxious animal in need of calming. And she was just as anxious, he could tell. What he couldn’t sense was the source of her anxiety: his paranoia? his accusations? her guilt? the desperation each of them felt to be believed by the other? And why was there desperation at all? He knew for a certainty what he had to lose. But what had she?

  She seemed to hear the question, and she said, “So few people have anything good between them. Don’t you see that?”

  He didn’t reply, but he felt compelled to look at her, right into her eyes, and the fact of this compulsion made him tear his gaze from her and look anywhere else, which was out of the window. He turned to it. He could see the paddock and the ponies within it.

  He said slowly, “You said you were afraid of them. But you went inside. You were in there with them. So you weren’t afraid, were you? Because if you were, you wouldn’t have gone inside for any reason.”

  “The horses? Gordon, I tried to explain—”

  “You would have just waited for me to release them onto the forest again. You knew I’d do that eventually. I’d have to do it. Then it would have been perfectly safe to go in but then you wouldn’t have had a reason, would you.”

  “Gordon. Gordon.” She was near him now. “Listen to yourself. That doesn’t make sense.”

  Like an animal, he could smell her, so close was she. The odour was faint, but it combined the scent she wore, a light sheen of perspiration, and something else. He thought it might be fear. Equally, he thought it might be discovery. His discovery or hers, he didn’t know, but it was there and it was real. Feral.

  The hair on his arms stirred, as if he were in the presence of danger, which he was. He always had been and this fact was so odd to him that he wanted to laugh like a wild man as he realised the simple truth that everything was completely backwards in his life: He could hide but he could not run.

  She said, “What are you accusing me of? Why are you accusing me of anything? You’re acting like …” She hesitated, not as if she was searching for a word, but rather as if she knew quite well what he was acting like and the last thing she wanted was to say it.

  “You want me to be arrested, don’t you?” Still, it was the ponies he looked at. They seemed to him to hold the answers. “You want me to be in trouble.”

  “Why would I want that? Look at me. Please. Turn around. Look at me, Gordon.”

  He felt her hand on his shoulder. He flinched. She withdrew it. She said his name. He said, “She was alive when I left her. She was sitting on that stone bench in the cemetery. And she was alive. I swear it.”

  “Of course she was alive,” Gina murmured. “You had no reason to harm Jemima.”

  The ponies outside trotted along the fence, as if knowing it was time to be released.

  “No one will believe that, though,” he said, more to himself than to her. “He—above all—won’t believe it now he has those tickets and that receipt.” So he would return, Gordon thought bleakly. Again and again. Over and over and directly into the end of time.

  “Then you must just tell the truth.” She touched him again, the back of his head this time, her fingers light on his hair. “Why on earth didn’t you simply tell the truth in the first place?”

  That was the question, wasn’t it? he thought bitterly. Tell the truth and to hell with the consequences, even when the consequences were going to be death. Or worse than death because at least death would put an end to how he had to live.

  She said, so near to him now, “Why didn’t you tell me? You can always talk to me, Gordon. Nothing you tell me could ever change how I feel about you.” And then he felt her cheek pressing against his back and her hands upon him, her knowing hands. They were first at his waist. Then her arms went round him and her soft hands were on his chest. She said, “Gordon, Gordon,” and then the hands descended, first to his stomach and then, caressing, between his thighs, reaching for him, reaching. “I would never,” she murmured. “I would never, ever, ever, darling …”

  He felt the heat, the pressure, and the surge of blood. It was such a good place to go, so good that whenever he was there, nothing else intruded upon his thoughts. So happen, happen, let it happen, he thought. For didn’t he deserve—

  He jerked away from her with a cry and swung round to face her.

  She blinked at him. “Gordon?”

  “No!”

  “Why? Gordon, so few people—”

  “Get away from me. I can see it now. It’s down to you that—”

  “Gordon? Gordon!”

  “I don’t want you here. I want you gone. Go bloody God damn you to hell away.”

  MEREDITH WAS HEADING for her car when her mobile rang. It was Gina. She was sobbing, unable to catch her breath long enough to make herself clear. All Meredith could tell was that something had happened between Gina and Gordon Jossie in the aftermath of the visit she and Gina had made to the Lyndhurst police station. For a moment Meredith thought that Chief Superintendent Whiting had shown up on Gordon’s property with the evidence they’d given him, but that didn’t seem to be the case, or if it was, Gina didn’t say so. What she did say was that Gordon had somehow discovered that his railway tickets and his hotel receipt were in the hands of the cops and he was in a terrifying rage about it. Gina had fled the property and was now holed up in her bed-sit above the Mad Hatter Tea Rooms.

  “I’m that scared,” she cried. “He knows I’m the one. I don’t know what he’ll do. I tried to pretend …He accused me …What could I say? I didn’t know how to make him believe …I’m so afraid. I can’t stay here. If I do, he’ll come. He knows where …” She sobbed anew. “I should never have …He wouldn’t have hurt her. But I thought he should explain to the police …because if they found it …”

  Meredith said, “I’ll come over straightaway. If he bangs on the door, you ring triple nine.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Ringwood.”

  “But that’ll take …He’ll come after me, Meredith. He was so angry.”

  “Sit in one of the tea rooms then. He won’t go after you there. Not in public. Scream your head off if you have to.”

  “I shouldn’t have—”

  “What? You shouldn’t have gone to the cops? What else were you supposed to do?”

  “But how did he know they have those tickets? How could he know? Did you tell someone?”

  Meredith hesitated. She didn’t want to admit she’d told Robbie Hastings. She picked up her pace to get to her car, and she said, “That bloke Whiting. He’d’ve gone out there with questions straightaway when we gave him that stuff. But this is good, Gina. It’s what we wanted to happen. Don’t you see that?”

  “I knew he’d know. That’s why I wanted you to be the one to—”

  “It’s going to be all right.” Meredith ended the call.

  She was, at this point, some distance from Lyndhurst but the dual carriageway out of Ringwood was going to help her. Her nerves begged for the affirmation tape to be played, so as she drove, she listened to it, repeating the phrases feverishly: I love you, I want you, you are special to me, I see you and I hear you, it’s not what you do but who you are that I love, I love you, I want you, you are special to me, I see you and I hear you, it’s not what you do but who you are that I love. And then I am enough, I am enough, I am enough, I am enough. And when that didn’t seem to be the ticket, I am a child of God, beloved to Him, I am a child of God, beloved to Him.

  SHE STEAMED INTO Lyndhurst some twenty minutes later. She felt marginally calmed. She left her car by the New Forest Museum and hurried back along the car park’s narrow entry towards the high street, where a tailback
from the traffic lights for the Romsey Road made crossing between the vehicles easy.

  Gina wasn’t in the tea rooms. These were closed for the day anyway, but the proprietress was still there doing her evening cleanup, so Meredith knew that had Gina wanted to sit and wait and be perfectly safe, she could have done so. Which meant, she concluded, that Gina had calmed down.

  She climbed the stairs. It was silent above, with just the noises from the high street drifting in from the open doorway. As before, it was hotter than Hades in the building, and Meredith felt the sweat trickle down her back, although she knew it was only partly due to the heat. The other part was fear. What if he was here already? In the room? With Gina? Having followed her back to Lyndhurst and ready to do his worst.

  Meredith had barely knocked on the door when it was flung open. Gina presented an unexpected sight. Her face was puffy and red. She was holding a flannel to the upper part of her arm, and a seam had given way on the sleeve of the shirt she was wearing.

  Meredith cried out, “Oh my God!”

  “He was upset. He didn’t mean to …”

  “What did he do?”

  Gina crossed to the basin where, Meredith saw, she’d put a few pathetic cubes of ice. These she wrapped into the washing flannel and when she did so, Meredith saw the ugly red mark on her arm. It looked the size of a fist.

  She said, “We’re phoning the police. That’s assault. The police have to know.”

  “I should never have gone to them. He wouldn’t have hurt her. That’s not who he is. I should have known that.”

  “Are you mad? Look at what he just did to you! We must—”

  “We’ve done enough. He’s frightened. He admits he was there. Then she died.”

  “He admitted it? You must tell the police. Those detectives from Scotland Yard. Oh, where the hell are they?”

  “Not that he killed her. Never that. He admitted he saw her. They had arranged to meet. He said he had to know for sure it was finished between them before he and I could …” She began to cry. She held the flannel back to her arm and she gave a wince when it touched her.

  “We must get you to casualty. That could be a serious injury.”

  “It’s nothing. A bruise, that’s all.” She looked down at her arm. Her lips moved convulsively. “I deserved it.”

  “That’s mad! That’s what abused women always say.”

  “I didn’t believe in him. And not to believe in him and then to betray him when I could have just asked him, and when all he did was go to talk to her to make sure they were done with each other so that he and I … ? He hates me now. I betrayed him.”

  “Don’t talk like that. If anyone did any betraying, we both know who it was. Why would you believe him anyway? He says he went there to make sure it was finished between them, but what else would he say? What else could he say now he knows the cops have the evidence they need? He’s in trouble, and he’s running scared. He’s going to cut down anyone in his way.”

  “I can’t believe it of him. It’s that policeman, Meredith. The chief superintendent we saw.”

  “You think he killed Jemima?”

  “I told you earlier: He’s been to see Gordon. There’s something between them. Something not right.”

  “You think it’s Jemima?” Meredith asked. “Jemima’s between them? They killed her together?”

  “No, no. Oh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought a thing about him, about him coming out to see Gordon at home those times, but then when we walked into his office today and I saw who he really is …I mean, that he’s a cop, that he’s someone important …When he came to the cottage, he never said he was a cop. And Gordon never said either. But he must know, mustn’t he?”

  Meredith finally saw how all of it fitted. More, she saw how they’d put themselves into real danger, she and Gina. For if Gordon Jossie and the chief superintendent were engaged in something together, she and Gina had handed over a piece of evidence that Whiting would need to destroy at once. But he wouldn’t need to destroy only the tickets and the hotel receipt, would he. He would also need to destroy those people who knew about them.

  He would have recognised Gina, obviously. But he didn’t know who Meredith herself was and she didn’t think she’d given him her name. So she was safe, for the moment. She and Gina could …Or had she? she wondered. Had she said her name? Had she introduced …shown identification …something? Isn’t that what one always did? No, no. She hadn’t done so. They’d merely gone to his office. They’d handed over the evidence, they’d spoken to him, and …God. God. She couldn’t remember. Why on earth couldn’t she remember? Because she was in a muddle, she thought. There was too much going on. She was getting confused. There was Gina, there was Gina’s panic, there was evidence, there was Gordon’s rage, and there was probably something else as well but she couldn’t remember.

  She said to Gina, “We’ve got to get out of here. I’m taking you home.”

  “But—”

  “Come on. You can’t stay here and neither can I.”

  She helped Gina gather her belongings, which were few enough. They threw them into a carrier bag and got under way. Gina would follow Meredith in her own car, and they would go to Cadnam. It seemed the safest possible place. They would have to share not only a room but also a bed and they would have to cook up some story for Meredith’s parents, but Meredith had time to work on that on the drive home, and when she pulled into the driveway at her parents’ house, she told Gina that a gas leak at the Mad Hatter Tea Rooms had made her lodging unfit for habitation. At such short notice, it was the best she could do.

  She said, “You’ve just come to work at Gerber and Hudson as the receptionist, all right?”

  Gina nodded, but she looked fearful, as if Meredith’s parents might phone up Gordon Jossie and announce her whereabouts should she get part of the story wrong.

  She relaxed a bit as Cammie came charging out of the house, shouting, “Mummy! Mummy!” The little girl flung herself at Meredith, wrapping her arms tightly round Meredith’s legs. “Gran wants to know where you been, Mummy.” And to Gina, “My name’s Cammie. What’s yours?”

  Gina smiled and Meredith could see her shoulders change, as if tension was draining out of them. She said, “I’m Gina.”

  “I’m five years old,” Cammie told her, demonstrating her age with her fingers as Meredith lifted her to her hip. “I’ll be six years old next, but not for a long time cos I jus’ turned five in May. We had a party. D’you have parties on your birthday?”

  “I haven’t in a long time.”

  “That’s too bad. Birthday parties are lovely, especially if you have cake.” And then, typically, she was off in another conversational direction. “Mummy, Gran’s cross cos you didn’t ring her and say you’d be late. You’re meant to ring her.”

  “I’ll apologise.” Meredith kissed her daughter with the loudest smack of her lips that she could manage, the way Cammie liked. She set her on the ground. “Could you run inside and tell her we have company, Cam?”

  Whatever pique Janet Powell might have been feeling thus was dissipated when Meredith ushered Gina into the house. Her parents were nothing if not hospitable, and once Meredith told them the spurious tale of the gas leak at the Mad Hatter Tea Rooms, nothing more needed to be said.

  Janet murmured, “Terrible, terrible, pet,” and patted Gina on the back. “Well, we can’t have you stopping there, can we? You sit right here and let me fix you a nice plate of ham salad. Cammie, you take Gina’s bag to your mum’s room and put out fresh towels in the bathroom. And ask your granddad will he scrub the tub.”

  Cammie scampered off to do all this, announcing that she’d even let Gina use her own personal bunny towels and calling out, “Granddad! We’re to clean the bath, you an’ me,” as Gina sat at the table.

  Meredith helped her mother put together the ham salad. Neither she nor Gina was actually hungry—how could they have been, considering the circumstances?—but they both made an effort
, as if with the mutually unspoken knowledge that failure to do so would arouse suspicion where further suspicion was unwanted.

  Gina went along with the idea of the gas leak with an ease that Meredith found herself admiring greatly, putting aside her worries about Gordon Jossie in a way that Meredith herself could never have managed in the same situation. Indeed, she soon had engaged Janet Powell in a conversation on the topic of Janet herself, her long marriage to Meredith’s father, motherhood, and grand-motherhood. Meredith could tell her mother was charmed.

  Nothing disturbed the evening and by the time darkness fell, Meredith’s guard had melted away. They were safe, for now. Tomorrow would be time enough to consider what to do next.

  She began to see that she had been wrong about Gina Dickens. Gina was just as much a victim in this as Jemima had been. Each of them had made the same mistake: For some reason that Meredith herself would never be able to understand, each of the women had fallen for Gordon Jossie, and Gordon Jossie had deceived them both.

  She couldn’t comprehend how two intelligent women had failed to see Gordon for what he so obviously was, but then she had to admit that her distrust of men wasn’t something that other women would naturally share. Besides, people generally learned from their own encounters with the opposite sex. People didn’t usually learn from hearing tales about others’ relationships gone sour.

  This had been the case for Jemima, and it was undoubtedly the case for Gina. She was learning now, that was true, although it still seemed that she didn’t want to believe.

  “I still can’t think he hurt her,” Gina said in a low voice when they were alone in Meredith’s bedroom. And then she added before Meredith could make an acidulous comment about Gordon Jossie, “Anyway, thank you. You’re a real friend, Meredith. And your mum’s lovely. So is Cammie. And your dad. You’re very lucky.”

  Meredith considered this. She said, “For a long time, it didn’t feel that way.” She told Gina then about Cammie’s father. She recited the whole wretched tale. She finished by saying, “When I wouldn’t have an abortion, that was that. He said I’d have to prove in court that he was the dad, but at that point I actually didn’t care to.”