This Body of Death: An Inspector Lynley Novel

  At the bottom of the high street, they headed due south into another leg of the Lyndhurst one-way system. Barbara followed. The signs, she saw, indicated Brockenhurst, and at yet another point of this traffic triangle, they turned into the A337. There they dipped almost immediately into a vast area of woodland. Everywhere was green and lush, and the traffic flowed well but with an eye for the animals. As the road was arrow straight for some distance, Barbara dropped back, the Polo well within her sight. There were very few options for turning when one came to Brockenhurst, and Barbara had a fairly good idea which one they intended to take.

  She was unsurprised when they took it a few minutes later: the route to Lymington. This, she knew, was going to put them within range of Gordon Jossie’s holding. She reckoned that was where they were heading. She meant to know why.

  She received at least a partial answer to this question when her mobile sounded “Peggy Sue.” Since she’d dumped her shoulder bag’s contents onto the passenger seat when looking for a fag, the mobile was easy enough to snatch up. She barked, “Havers,” into it and added, “Be quick. I can’t pull over. Who is this?”

  “Frazer—”

  “What the hell?” No way could he have her number, Barbara thought. Her mind was wrestling with all the possibilities of how he’d managed to get it as she demanded, “Who’s that with you in the bloody car? What’re you—”

  “Barbara?”

  She realised it was DI Lynley. She said, “Damn. Sorry. I thought you were …Where are you? Are you here?”

  “Where?”

  “Hampshire. Where else? Listen, I’m following—”

  “We’ve broken his alibi.”

  “Whose?”

  “Frazer Chaplin’s. He wasn’t at home the day she died, not that Bella McHaggis can actually verify. She assumed he was there because he’d always come home between his jobs, and he encouraged her to think he’d done his usual thing that day. And the woman in the picture from the portrait gallery—” He stopped as someone in the background spoke to him. He said, “Yes. Right,” to that person and then, “She’s called Georgina Francis, Barbara, not Gina Dickens. Bella McHaggis identified her.” Someone spoke to him again in the background. He then said, “As to Whiting …”

  “What about Whiting?” Barbara asked. “Who’s Georgina Francis? Who’re you talking to anyway?” She reckoned she knew the answer to this last, but she wanted to hear it from Lynley’s own lips.

  “The superintendent,” he said. He went rapidly on to tell her how Georgina Francis fitted into the picture: former lodger at the home of Bella McHaggis, tossed out on her ear for violating the McHaggis dictum against fraternisation among those living beneath her roof. Frazer Chaplin had been the man involved.

  “What the hell was she doing at the portrait gallery?” Barbara asked. “That’s some bloody coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “Not if she was there to check out the competition. Not if she was there because she was and is still involved with Frazer Chaplin. Why would their relationship have ended just because she had to find other lodgings? We reckon—”

  “Who?” She couldn’t help herself although she hated herself the moment she said it.

  “What?”

  “Who reckons?”

  “Barbara, for God’s sake.” He was not a fool.

  “All right. Sorry. Go on.”

  “We’ve spoken to Mrs. McHaggis at some length.” He banged on then about DragonFly Tonics, transfers, Frazer’s lime green Vespa, Winston Nkata’s viewing of the CCTV films in the area, the two e-fits, and the yellow shirt and Jemima’s handbag found within the Oxfam bin about which, he concluded, “We reckon his intention was to hand them over to Georgina Francis to plant somewhere on Gordon Jossie’s holding. But he didn’t have the time to do it. Once Bella saw the story in the paper about the body, she called the police and you turned up. There was too much risk at that point for him to do anything but sit tight and wait for a better opportunity.”

  “He’s here. In Hampshire. Sir, he’s here.”

  “Who?”

  “Frazer Chaplin. I’m following him just now. He’s got a woman with him and we’re heading—”

  “She’s got Frazer Chaplin in sight,” Lynley said to his companion on the other end of the conversation. The superintendent said something quite sharply. Lynley said to Havers, “Phone for backup, Barbara. That’s not from me. That’s from Isabelle.”

  Isabelle, Barbara thought. Bloody Isabelle. She said, “I don’t know where we are or where we’re going, so I don’t know where to ask backup to go, sir.” She was playing fast and loose for reasons she didn’t want to explore.

  Lynley said, “Get close enough for the number plates if you can. And you can tell the make of car, can’t you? You can see the colour.”

  “Just the colour,” she said. “I’ll have to follow—”

  “God damn it, Barbara. Then phone for backup, explain the situation, and give your own bloody number plates and a description of your own car. I don’t have to tell you this bloke’s dangerous. If he’s got someone with him—”

  “He’s not going to hurt her while she’s driving, sir. I’ll phone for backup when we get where we’re going. What about Whiting?”

  “Barbara, if nothing else, you’re putting yourself in danger. This is not the time for you to—”

  “What’ve you learned, sir? What did Norman tell you?”

  There was more talk from Ardery at his end. Lynley said to the superintendent, “She thinks—”

  Barbara cut in airily with, “I’m going to have to ring off, sir. Terrible traffic and I think I’m losing the connection anyway and—”

  “Whiting,” he said. She knew he did it to get her attention. Typical of him. She was forced to listen to a catalogue of facts: Whiting charged by the Home Office with the highest level of protection of someone; Lynley and Ardery were concluding the person was Jossie; it was the only explanation for why Whiting hadn’t turned over to New Scotland Yard the evidence of Jossie’s trip to London; Whiting knew the Met would focus on Jossie because of it; that couldn’t be allowed to happen.

  “Even if the evidence made it look like Jossie killed someone?” Barbara demanded. “Bloody hell, sir. What kind of high-level protection asks for that? Who is this guy?”

  They didn’t know but it didn’t actually matter at the moment because Frazer Chaplin was the one they were after and since Barbara had Frazer Chaplin in view …

  Blah, blah, blah, Barbara thought. She said, “Right. Right. Got it. Oh damn, I think I’m losing you, sir …bad connection here …I’m getting out of range.”

  “Phone for backup and do it at once!” were the last words she heard. She was not out of range, but ahead of her the car she was following had made a sharp turn into a secondary road on the edge of Brockenhurst village. She couldn’t be bothered arguing with Lynley at that point. She put her foot down to catch up and veered right just ahead of an oncoming removals van, where a sign pointed to Sway.

  Her mind was swarming with a horde of details: facts, names, faces, and possibilities. She reckoned she could pause, sort through it all, and phone for the backup Lynley was insisting upon, or she could get to wherever they were going first, suss out the situation, and make her decisions accordingly.

  She chose the second option.

  TESS RODE IN the back seat of Whiting’s vehicle. Dumb as the poor dog was, she was dead delighted to be going for a ride in the midst of a workday since she usually had to hang about waiting for Gordon to finish up before she was able to do anything other than lie in the shade and hope for the diversion of a squirrel to chase. Now, though, the windows were open, her ears were flopping, and her nose was catching the delightful smells of high summer. Gordon realised that, come what was likely to come, the retriever wasn’t going to be able to help him.

  What was going to come soon became apparent. Instead of heading in the direction of Fritham—the first enclave of cottages they should have come to on the
route to Gordon’s holding—Whiting drove in the direction of Eyeworth Pond. There was a track in advance of the pond that they could have taken to get over to Roger Penny Way and another road that still would have made quick work of reaching Gordon’s cottage, but Whiting passed this by and went on to the pond where he parked on the upper level of the two terraces that comprised the roughly hewn car park. It overlooked the water.

  This delighted Tess no end, as the dog clearly expected a walk in the woods that edged the pond and stretched out to encompass a vast acreage of trees, hills, and inclosures. She barked, wagged her tail, and looked meaningfully out of the open window. Whiting said, “Either shut the dog up or open the door and get it out of here.”

  Gordon said, “Aren’t we—”

  “Shut the dog up.”

  From this Gordon understood that whatever was to happen was going to happen right there in the car. And this made sense, didn’t it, when one considered the time of day, the season, and the fact that they were not alone. For not only were there vehicles in the lower section of the car park at this very moment, there were also two families feeding ducks on the distant pond, a group of cyclists setting off into the woods, an elderly couple in deck chairs having a picnic beneath one of the distant willow trees, and a woman taking a pack of six corgis on a midday stroll.

  Gordon turned to his retriever. He said, “Down, Tess. Later,” and he prayed that she would obey. He knew the dog would run into the trees if Whiting forced him to open the door. He also knew how unlikely it was that the cop would allow him to fetch her once she’d done so. Suddenly Tess was more important to him than anything else in his pathetic excuse for a life. Her affection for him, in the way of all dogs, was unconditional. He was going to need that in the days to come.

  The dog lowered herself to the seat with great reluctance. Before she did so, she cast a soulful look from the outdoors to him. “Later,” he told her. “Good dog.”

  Whiting chuckled. He moved his seat back and adjusted its position. He said, “Very nice. Very, very nice. Didn’t know you had such a way with animals. Amazing to learn something new about you when I reckoned I already knew it all.” He made himself more comfortable then, and he said, “Now. We’ve some unfinished business, you and I.”

  Gordon said nothing in reply. He saw the genius in what Whiting had planned and how well the cop had been able to read him from the first. Their last interaction had been interrupted, but it had gone on long enough for Gordon to know where every future interaction would lead. Whiting understood that Gordon would never again see him both alone and unprepared to defend himself. But defending himself against Whiting in a public place would lead to an exposure he could not afford. He was caught again. He was caught on all sides. And it was always going to be that way.

  Whiting lowered the zip on his trousers. He said, “Consider it this way, laddie. I reckon you’ve taken it in the arse but I don’t fancy that. The other will do. Come along and be a good boy, eh? Then we’ll call it quits, you and I. Off you’ll go with no one the wiser. About anything, my dear.”

  Gordon knew he could end it—now, in this moment, and forever. But the aftermath of doing so would end him as well, and his cowardice was that he could not cope with that. He simply lacked the bottle. That was who he was and who he had always been.

  How long would it take and what would it cost him to perform for Whiting? Surely, he thought, he could live through this when he’d lived through everything else.

  He turned in his seat. He glanced back at Tess. Her head was on her paws, her eyes gazed at him mournfully, her tail wagged slowly. He said to Whiting, “The dog goes with me.”

  “Whatever you like.” Whiting smiled.

  MEREDITH’S HANDS WERE slick on the steering wheel. Her heart was pounding. She couldn’t catch her breath. The bloke had something poked into her side—the same something sharp that he’d likely been holding in readiness when she’d stupidly broken into Gina Dickens’s bed-sitting room—and he murmured, “How d’you reckon it feels when it pierces the flesh?” in reference to it.

  She hadn’t a clue who he was. But he, evidently, knew exactly who she was because he called her by name. He’d said within moments and into her ear, “And this must be Meredith Powell, who pinched my pretty gold coin. I’ve been hearing about you, Meredith, I have. But sure I didn’t expect we’d ever get the chance to become acquainted.”

  She’d said, “Who are you?” and even as she’d said it, she knew there was something familiar about him.

  “That,” he said, “is one of those need-to-know questions, Meredith. And you, as it happens, don’t need to know.”

  The voice. She’d heard enough at that point to connect him to the phone call she’d intercepted in Gina’s bed-sitting room. She’d thought at the time it was Chief Superintendent Whiting—when she’d thought at all, she concluded bitterly—but this had to be the man who’d placed that phone call. The voice seemed right.

  “Your arrival changes the nature of things a wee bit,” he’d said to her.

  So they had gone to her car. Her mind began racing when he forced her into the driver’s seat. He said she was to take them to Gordon Jossie’s property, so first she concluded that here was the answer: this bloke and Gordon in cahoots and Jemima dying because she’d discovered it. That, however, brought up the question of Gina Dickens and how she fitted in, which forced Meredith to decide that it was Gina and this bloke who were in cahoots. But that brought up the question of who Gina was, which brought up the question of who Gordon was, which brought up the question of where Chief Superintendent Whiting fitted in since, according to Michele Daugherty, it was Jossie’s name that had brought Whiting to her office making whatever threats he’d made. And that brought up the question of whether Michele Daugherty herself was involved because perhaps she was a liar as well since it seemed they all were liars.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God, Meredith thought. She should have gone into work at Gerber & Hudson that day.

  She considered driving wildly round Hampshire instead of heading to Gordon’s holding when the man told her to take him there. She reckoned if she drove fast enough and wildly enough, there was a chance that she could attract the attention of someone—a policeman out on patrol definitely wouldn’t have gone amiss—and save herself that way. But there was that thing poked into her side and the suggestion it made of a slow and painful entry somewhere in the vicinity of …what? Was it her liver down there? Where were her kidneys, exactly? And how much did it hurt to be stabbed? Was she enough of a heroine to undergo …and if she did …but would he really stab her if she was driving the car …and what if she drove erratically and he told her to stop and then he marched her into the woods …into one of hundreds upon hundreds of woods …How long would it take someone to find her while she slowly bled to death? Like Jemima had done. Oh God oh God oh God.

  “You killed her!” She blurted it out. She hadn’t intended to. She’d intended to remain calm. Sigourney Weaver in that old film about the space creature. Even older, ancient even, telly shows featuring Diana Rigg in her high-heeled boots kicking bad guys in the teeth. What would they do in this situation? she wondered ridiculously. What would Sigourney and Diana do? Easy for them because it was all in the script, and the alien, the bad guy, the monster, whatever …It always dies at the end, doesn’t it? Only Jemima was already dead and, “You killed her! You killed her!” Meredith shouted.

  The deadly point of his weapon pressed harder against her. “Drive,” he said. “Killing, I’ve found, is rather easier than I thought it would be.”

  She thought of Cammie. Her vision went blurry. She got a grip. She would do what was asked and what was necessary in order to get back to Cammie.

  She said, “I’ve a little girl. She’s five years old. Do you have children?”

  He said, “Drive.”

  “What I mean is you have to let me go. Cammie doesn’t have another parent. Please. You don’t want to do this to my little girl.”

/>   She glanced at him. He was dark like a Spaniard, and his face was pockmarked. His eyes were brown. They were fixed on her. They held nothing. They were, she realised, like gazing at a blackboard.

  She looked away and kept her attention on the road, then. She began to pray.

  BARBARA RECKONED THAT if the other car was heading to Gordon Jossie’s holding—as it apparently was since she could come up with no other reason that it had turned towards Sway—Gina Dickens had to be there. Or Georgina Francis. Or whoever the bloody hell she was. In the middle of the day, they wouldn’t be taking a trek out to Jossie’s property in order to meet Jossie himself, who would be at work. Instead, they were on their way to meet someone else, and that person had to be Gina/Georgina. All Barbara needed to do was to follow at a safe distance, to make certain they ended up where she suspected they would, and then to ring for backup if it looked as though she wasn’t going to be able to deal with them by herself.

  If she moved too soon against Frazer Chaplin, then it stood to reason Georgina Francis would get away. In this part of the country that would not be difficult. Reaching the Isle of Wight took only a ferry ride. Reaching its airport from Yarmouth would not be difficult. Southampton was no great distance, either. Nor was Southampton’s airport. So she had to be cautious. The last thing she wanted was to play her hand too soon.

  Her mobile rang again. I love you, Peggy Sue. She glanced at the phone’s screen and saw it was Lynley, no doubt ringing because he assumed they’d been cut off earlier. She let her voice mail take the message as she kept driving.

  The Polo ahead of her made a turn into the first of the narrow lanes that led in the end to Gordon Jossie’s cottage. They were less than two minutes from their destination now, and when they reached it and the car ahead turned into Gordon Jossie’s drive, Barbara was unsurprised.

  She zipped past—just another car in the lane as far as they were concerned, she hoped—and she found a spot farther along the way where she crammed her Mini into an opening provided by the access into a local farm’s field. There she parked, grabbed up her mobile phone in a bow to cooperating with her superior officers—although she was careful to switch it off—and hurried back in the direction from which she’d come.