“Is that normal procedure?” Barbara asked. Why would a chief superintendent want to be informed about phone calls, crank or otherwise?
He said that it wasn’t normal procedure at all, but in this case the young lady wasn’t taking no for an answer. She wanted something done about a bloke called Gordon Jossie. She’d been asked did she want to make a formal complaint against the man, but she was having none of that. “Said she finds him a suspicious character,” Whiting said.
“Bit odd that you’d be informed, sir,” Barbara noted.
“I wouldn’t have been in the normal course of things. But then a second young lady phoned, saying much the same thing, and that’s when I learned about it. Seems odd to you, no doubt, but this isn’t London. It’s a small, close place and I find it wise to know what’s going on in it.”
“Anticipating this bloke Jossie might be up to something?” Nkata asked.
“Nothing suggests that. But this”—Whiting indicated the phone message—“puts him onto the radar.”
He went on to tell the Scotland Yard officers they were welcome to go about their business on his patch, and when they gave him Jossie’s address, he told them how to find the man’s property, near the village of Sway. If they needed his help or the help of one of his officers …There was something about the way he made the offer. Barbara had the feeling he was doing more than just making nice with them.
Sway was located off the regularly traveled routes in the New Forest, the apex of a triangle created by itself, Lymington, and New Milton. They drove there on lanes that became progressively narrower, and they ended up in a stretch of road called Paul’s Lane, where houses had names but no numbers and tall hedges blocked most of them from view.
There were a number of cottages strung along the lane, but only two substantial properties. Jossie’s turned out to be one of them.
They parked on the verge next to a tall hawthorn hedge. They walked up the lumpy driveway, and they found him within a paddock to the west of a neat cob cottage. He was inspecting the rear hooves of two restless ponies. Under the baking sun, he wore dark glasses as well as a baseball cap, and he was protected further by long sleeves, gloves, trousers, and boots.
This was not the case for the young woman watching him from outside the paddock. She was calling out, “D’you think they’re ready for release yet?” and she was wearing a striped sundress that left her arms and legs bare. Despite the heat, she looked fresh and cool, and her head was covered by a straw hat banded by material that matched the dress. Hadiyyah, Barbara thought, would have approved.
“Dead silly to be afraid of ponies,” Gordon Jossie replied.
“I’m trying to make friends with them. Honestly.” She turned her head and caught sight of Barbara and Winston, her gaze taking them both in but then going back to linger on Winston. She was very attractive, Barbara thought. Even with her own limited experience, she could tell that the young woman wore her makeup like a pro. Again, Hadiyyah would have approved. “Hullo,” the woman said to them. “Are you lost?”
At this, Gordon Jossie looked up. He watched their progress up the driveway and over to the fence. This was barbed wire strung between wooden posts, and his companion had been standing with her hands clasped on top of one of the latter.
Jossie had the wiry sort of body that reminded Barbara of a footballer. When he took off his cap and wiped his brow with his arm, she saw his hair was thinning, but its ginger colour suited him well.
Barbara and Winston fished out their IDs. Winston did the honours this time. When he’d finished the introductions, he said to the man in the paddock, “You’re Gordon Jossie?”
Jossie nodded. He walked towards the fence. Nothing much showed upon his face. His eyes, of course, they could not read. The glass in his lenses was virtually black.
The young woman identified herself as Gina Dickens. “Scotland Yard?” she said, with a smile. “Like Inspector Lestrade?” And then to tease Jossie, “Gordon, have you been naughty?”
There was a wooden gate nearby, but Jossie didn’t come through it. Rather, he went to a hosepipe that was looped round a newish-looking fence post and attached to a freestanding water tap outside the paddock. He removed the hosepipe and unspooled it in the direction of a stone trough. Absolutely pristine, this was, Barbara saw. It was either new like the fence post or the man was more than a bit compulsive about keeping things tidy. The latter didn’t seem likely since part of the paddock was overgrown and in disrepair, as if he’d given up in the midst of repairing the area. He began adding water to the trough. Over his shoulder, he said, “What’s the trouble, then?”
Interesting question, Barbara thought. Directly to trouble. But then who could blame him? A personal visit from the Metropolitan police wasn’t one’s garden experience.
She said, “Could we have a word, Mr. Jossie?”
“Seems like we’re having it.”
“Gordon, I think they might mean …” Gina hesitated, then she said to Winston, “We’ve a table and chairs beneath the tree in the garden,” and indicated the front of the cottage. “Shall we meet you there?”
“Works for me,” Nkata said and went on with, “Hot today, innit?” giving Gina Dickens the benefit of his high-wattage smile.
“I’ll fetch something cool for us to drink,” she said, and she went off towards the cottage, but not before she cast a puzzled glance in Jossie’s direction.
Barbara and Nkata waited for Jossie, the better to make sure he took a direct route from the paddock to the front garden with no sidetracking. When he’d finished topping off the trough for the ponies, he returned the hosepipe to the post and came through the wooden paddock gate, removing his gloves.
“It’s this way,” he said to them, as if they couldn’t find the front garden without his help. He led them to it, a patch of parched lawn at this time of year, but containing flower beds that were thriving. He saw Barbara looking at these and said, “Gina uses the dishwater. We do the washing up with special detergent,” as if to explain why the flowers weren’t dead in the middle of hose pipebans and a very dry summer.
“Nice,” Barbara noted. “I kill most everything and it doesn’t take special washing-up soap for me to do it.” She got down to business as they sat at the table. This looked to be part of a little outdoor dining area featuring candles, a floral tablecloth, and complementary cushions on the chairs. Someone, it seemed, had a flair for decorating. Barbara pulled the postcard photo of Jemima Hastings from her bag. She laid it on the table in front of Gordon Jossie. She said, “C’n you tell us anything about this woman, Mr. Jossie?”
“Why?”
“Because your mobile number”—she flipped the card over—“is on the back here. And what with ‘Have you seen this woman?’ on the front, it seems like you probably know her.” Barbara turned the postcard faceup again, sliding it within inches of Jossie’s hand. He did not touch it.
Gina came round the side of the cottage carrying a tray on which sat a pink concoction in a squat glass jug. Sprigs of mint and a few pieces of ice floated in it. She placed the tray on the table and her gaze took in the postcard. She looked from it to Jossie. She said, “Gordon? Is something … ?”
Abruptly Jossie said, “This is Jemima,” and indicated the picture on the card by flicking his fingers towards it.
Gina sat slowly. She looked perplexed. “On the card?”
Jossie didn’t reply. Barbara didn’t want to hasten to any conclusions about his reticence. She reckoned, among other things, his lack of response might well be due to embarrassment. Clearly this woman Gina Dickens was something to Jossie, and she’d likely be wondering why he was being faced with a postcard featuring another woman whom he clearly knew.
Barbara waited for Jossie’s answer to Gina’s question. She and Nkata exchanged a look. They were of one mind in the matter and that mind was of the let him swing for a moment variety.
Gina said, “May I?” and when Barbara nodded, she picked up the postcard. S
he made no comment about the photo itself, but her gaze took in the query at the bottom of the card and she flipped it over and saw the phone number printed across the back. She said nothing. Instead, she placed the card gently on the table and poured each of them a glass of whatever it was she’d concocted.
The heat seemed to grow more oppressive in the silence. Gina herself was the one to break it. She said, “I’d no idea …” Her fingers touched her throat. Barbara could see her pulse beating there. It put her in mind of the manner in which Jemima Hastings had died. “How long have you been looking for her, Gordon?” Gina asked.
Jossie fixed his eyes on the postcard. He finally said, “This is months old, this is. I got a stack of them …I dunno …round April, it was. I didn’t know you then.”
“Want to explain?” Barbara asked him. Nkata opened his neat leather notebook.
Gina said, “Is something going on?”
Barbara wasn’t about to give any more information than was necessary at this point, so she said nothing. Nor did Winston, except to murmur, “So …Mr. Jossie?”
Gordon Jossie made a restless movement in his chair. The story he told was brief but direct. Jemima Hastings was his former lover; she’d left him after more than two years together; he’d wanted to find her. He’d seen an advertisement for the photographic portrait show in the Mail on Sunday by purest chance and this—with a nod at the postcard—was the photo that had been used in the advert for that show. So he’d gone to London. No one at the gallery would tell him where the model was, and he hadn’t a clue how to contact the photographer. So he bought up the postcards—forty, fifty, or sixty because he couldn’t recall but they’d had to fetch more from their storage room—and he’d stuck them in phone boxes, in shop windows, in any spot where he thought they’d get noticed. He’d worked in widening rings round the gallery itself till he ran out of cards. And then he waited.
“Any luck?” Barbara asked him.
“I never heard from anyone about her.” He said again to Gina, “This was before I’d met you. It’s nothing to do with you and me. Far as I knew, far as I know, wasn’t anyone who ever saw them, saw her, and put two and two together. Waste of time and money, it was. But I felt like I had to try.”
“To find her, you mean,” Gina said in a quiet voice.
He said to her, “It was the time we’d put in together. Over two years. I just wanted to know. It doesn’t mean anything.” Jossie turned to Barbara. “Where’d you get this, anyway? What’s going on?”
She answered his question with one of her own. “Care to tell us why Jemima left you?”
“I’ve no bloody idea. One day she decided it was over, and off she went. She made the announcement and the next day she was gone.”
“Just like that?”
“I reckoned she’d been planning it for weeks. I phoned her at first once she’d gone. I wanted to know what the hell was going on. Who wouldn’t, after two years together when someone says it’s over and just disappears and you’ve not seen it coming? But she never took the calls and she never returned them and then the mobile number got changed altogether or she got a new mobile or whatever, because the phone calls stopped going through. I asked her brother about it—”
“Her brother?” Nkata looked up from his notebook, and when Gordon Jossie identified the brother as Robbie Hastings, Nkata jotted this down.
“But he said he didn’t know anything about what she was up to. I didn’t believe him—he never liked me and I expect he was dead chuffed when Jemima ended things—but I couldn’t get a single detail out of him. I finally gave up. And then”—with a look at Gina Dickens that had to be called grateful—“I met Gina last month.”
“When did you last see Jemima Hastings, then?” Barbara asked.
“The morning of the day she left me.”
“Which was?”
“Day after Guy Fawkes. Last year.” He took a swig of his drink and then wiped his mouth on his arm. He said, “Now are you going to tell me what this is all about?”
“I’m going to ask you if you’ve made any journeys out of Hampshire in the last week or so.”
“Why?”
“Will you answer the question, please?”
Jossie’s face suffused with colour. “I don’t think I will. What the hell is going on? Where’d you get that postcard? I didn’t break any laws. You see postcards in phone boxes all over London and they’re a damn sight more suggestive than that one.”
“This was among Jemima’s belongings in her lodgings,” Barbara told him. “I’m sorry to tell you that she’s dead. She was murdered in London about six days ago. So again, I’ll ask you if you’ve made any journeys out of Hampshire.”
Barbara had heard the expression pale to the lips but she’d never seen it occur so rapidly. She reckoned it had to do with Gordon Jossie’s natural colouring: His face gained colour quickly, and it seemed to lose it in much the same manner.
“Oh my God,” Gina Dickens murmured. She reached for his hand.
Her movement made him flinch away. “What d’you mean, murdered?” he asked Barbara.
“Is there more than one meaning to murdered?” she inquired. “Have you been out of Hampshire, Mr. Jossie?”
“Where did she die?” he asked as a response, and when Barbara didn’t answer he said to Nkata, “Where did this happen? How? Who?”
“She was murdered in a place called Abney Park Cemetery,” Barbara told him. “So again, Mr. Jossie, I’ll have to ask you—”
“Here,” he said numbly. “I’ve not left. I’ve been here. I was here.”
“Here at home?”
“No. ’Course not. I’ve been working. I was …” He seemed dazed. Either that, Barbara reckoned, or he was trying to do a mental two-step to come up with an alibi that he hadn’t expected to have to give. He explained that he was a thatcher and that he’d been working on a job, which was what he did every day except weekends and some Friday afternoons. When asked if someone could confirm that fact, he said yes, of course, for God’s sake, he had an apprentice. He gave the name—Cliff Coward—and the phone number as well. Then he said, “How … ?” and licked his lips. “How did she …die?”
“She was stabbed, Mr. Jossie,” Barbara said. “She bled out before anyone found her.”
Gina did clasp Jossie’s hand at that point, but she didn’t say anything. What, really, could she say, given her position?
Barbara considered this last: her position, its security, or its lack thereof. She said, “And you, Ms. Dickens? Have you been out of Hampshire?”
“No, of course not.”
“And six days ago?”
“I’m not sure. Six days? I’ve been only to Lymington. The shopping …in Lymington.”
“Who can confirm that?”
She was silent. It was the moment when someone was supposed to say, “You aren’t bloody well suggesting that I had something to do with this?” but neither of them did. Instead they glanced at each other and then Gina said, “I don’t expect anyone can confirm it except Gordon. But why should someone be able to confirm it?”
“Keep the receipts from your shopping, did you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, one doesn’t, ordinarily. I can look, but I certainly didn’t think …” She looked frightened. “I’ll try to find them,” she said. “But if I can’t …”
“Don’t be stupid.” Jossie directed this remark not to Gina but to Barbara and Winston. “What’s she supposed to have done? Obliterated the competition? There isn’t any. We were finished, Jemima and me.”
“Right,” Barbara said. She gave a nod to Winston and he made much of flipping his notebook closed. “Well, you are now, aren’t you, you and Jemima? Finished is definitely the word for it.”
HE WENT INTO the barn. He thought to brush Tess—as he usually did in this kind of moment—but the dog wouldn’t come despite his whistling and his calls. He stood stupidly at her brushing table, fruitlessly and with a very dry mouth shou
ting, “Tess! Tess! Get in here, dog!” with absolutely no result because, of course, animals were intuitive and Tess damn well knew something wasn’t right.
Gina did come, however. She said quietly, “Gordon, why didn’t you tell them the truth?” She sounded fearful and he cursed himself for that fear in her voice.
She would ask, of course. It was, after all, the question of the hour. He wanted to thank her for having said nothing to the Scotland Yard cops because he knew what it must look like that he’d lied to them.
She said, “You did go to Holland, didn’t you? You were there, weren’t you? That new source for reeds? That site where they’re growing them? Because the reeds from Turkey are becoming rubbish … ? That’s where you were, isn’t it? Why didn’t you tell them?”
He didn’t want to look at her. He heard it all in her voice, so he bloody well didn’t want to see it in her face. But he had to look her in the eye for the simple reason that she was Gina, and not just anyone.
So he looked. He saw not fear but rather concern. It was for him and he knew it and knowing it made him weak and desperate. He said, “Yes.”
“You went to Holland?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you just tell them? Why did you say … ? You weren’t at work, Gordon.”
“Cliff’ll say I was.”
“He’ll lie for you?”
“If I ask him, yes. He doesn’t like coppers.”
“But why would you ask him? Why not just tell them the truth? Gordon, has something …Is something … ?”
He wanted her to approach him as she’d done before, early in the morning, in bed and then in the shower because although it was sex and only sex, it meant more than sex, and that was what he needed. How odd that he’d understand in that moment what Jemima had wanted from him and from the act. A lifting up and a carrying off and an end to that which could never be ended because it was imprisoned within and no simple conjoining of bodies could free it.
He set down the brush. Obviously, the dog was not going to obey—even for a brushing—and he felt like a fool for waiting for her. He said, “Geen,” and Gina said in return, “Tell me the truth.”