This Body of Death (47 page)

He said, unnecessarily, “These ponies aren’t yours. What the hell are you up to?”

Jossie said nothing.

Robbie waited. They had a moment of stalemate. It came to Rob that further conversation or argument with the thatcher was going to be pointless. It also came to him that it didn’t matter. The cops were on to him now.

He said, “Right then. Whatever you want. I’ll come tomorrow with a trailer to fetch them. They need to go back where they belong. And you need to keep your hands off other people’s livestock.”

A
T FIRST
G
ORDON
tried to believe Robbie Hastings had been bluffing, because to believe anything else would mean one of two things. Either he himself had blindly misplaced trust yet another mad time in his life or someone had broken into his house, found damning evidence that he had not even known would be damning, and taken it away to bide his time or her time and to present it to the cops when it could do the most damage to him.

Of the two possibilities, he preferred the second one because although it would mean the end was near, at least it would not mean he’d been betrayed by someone he trusted. If, on the other hand, it was the first one, he believed he might not recover from the blow.

Yet he knew it was far more likely that Gina had found the railway tickets and the hotel receipt than it was that Meredith Powell or someone with equal antipathy for him had entered his house, gone through the rubbish, and pocketed those materials without his knowledge. So when Gina returned home, he was waiting for her.

He heard her car first. It was odd because she cut the engine as she came into the driveway, and she coasted to a stop behind his pickup. When she got out, she closed the door so quietly that he couldn’t even hear the click of it. Nor could he hear her footsteps on the gravel or the sound of the back door opening.

She didn’t call his name as she usually did. Instead, she came up the stairs and into the bedroom and she gave a start when she saw him by the window, the sun behind him and the rest of him, he knew, just a silhouette to her. But she made a quick recovery. She said, “Here you are,” and she smiled as if nothing was wrong, and for that single moment
how
he wanted to believe that she had not given him up to the police.

He said nothing as he tried to gather his wits together. She brushed an errant lock of hair from her cheek. She said his name, and when he didn’t reply, she took a step towards him and said, “Is something wrong, Gordon?”

Something. Everything. Had there been a moment when he’d thought that things could ever be right? And why had he thought that? A woman’s smile, perhaps, the touch of a hand that was soft and smooth against his skin, his hands on the fullness of hips or buttocks, his mouth on the sweetness of breasts …Had he been so much of a fool that the mere act of having a woman somehow could obliterate all that had gone before?

He wondered what Gina knew at this point. The fact that she was here suggested it was little enough, but the fact that she had possibly—probably—found the rail tickets, found the hotel’s receipt, keeping them close to her until she could use them to harm him …And
why
had he not thrown them away on the platform in Sway upon his return? That was the real question. Had he only thought to do so, he and this woman would not be standing here in this bedroom, in the insufferable summer heat, facing each other with the sin of betrayal in both of their hearts, not only in hers, because he could not claim she was the only sinner.

He hadn’t thrown the tickets away on the station platform and he hadn’t rid himself of the receipt because he hadn’t considered that something might happen to Jemima, that his possession of those bits of paper might damn him, that Gina might find them and keep them and say nothing about his lie to her of having gone to Holland, allowing him to dig himself in deeper and deeper and still not saying a word about what she knew about where he had really been, which was not in Holland, not on a farm talking to someone about reeds, not out of the country at all but rather in the heart of a London cemetery trying to wrest from Jemima’s possession those things she could use to destroy him if she chose.

Gina said, “Gordon, why’re you not answering me? Why’re you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re …” She brushed at her hair again, although this time none of it was out of place. Her lips curved but her smile faltered. “Why won’t you answer? Why’re you staring? Is something wrong?”

“I went to talk to her, Gina,” he said. “That’s all I did.”

She furrowed her brow. “Who?”

“I needed to talk to her. She agreed to meet me. I didn’t tell you only because there was no reason to tell you. It was over between us, but she had something of mine that I wanted back.”

She said, the realisation apparently coming to her, “You saw
Jemima
? When?”

He said, “Don’t pretend you haven’t sussed that. Rob Hastings was here.”

She said, “Gordon, I don’t see how …Rob Hastings?” She gave a small laugh but it held no humour. “You know, you’re actually frightening me. You sound …I don’t know …fierce? Did Rob Hastings say something to you about me? Did he do something? Did you argue with him?”

“He told me about the rail tickets and the hotel receipt.”

“What rail tickets? What hotel receipt?”

“The ones you found. The ones you handed over.”

Her hand rose. She placed the tips of her fingers between her breasts. She said, “Gordon, honestly. You’re …What are you talking about? Did Rob Hastings claim that I gave him something? Something of yours?”

“The cops,” he said.

“What about them?”

“You gave the rail tickets and that hotel receipt to the cops. But if you’d asked me about them instead, I would have told you the truth. I didn’t before this because I didn’t want you to worry. I didn’t want you to think there might still be something between us, because there wasn’t.”

Gina’s eyes—wide, blue, more beautiful than the northern sky—observed him as her head slowly tilted to one side. She said, “What on earth are you talking about?
What
tickets?
What
receipts? What did Rob Hastings claim I did?”

He’d claimed nothing, of course. Gordon had merely concluded. And he’d done that because it seemed to him that, unless someone had surreptitiously gone through his rubbish, no one else could have come across those items save Gina. He said, “Rob told me the cops in Lyndhurst have what proves I was in London that day. The day she died.”

“But you weren’t.” Gina’s voice sounded perfectly reasonable. “You were in Holland. You went about the reeds because those from Turkey are becoming rubbish. You didn’t keep the tickets to Holland, so you had to say you were working that day. And Cliff told the police—that man and woman from Scotland Yard—that you were working because you knew they’d think you were lying if you didn’t produce those tickets. And that’s what happened.”

“No. What happened is I went to London. What happened is that I met Jemima in the place she died. On the day she died.”

“Don’t say that!”

“It’s the truth. But when I left her, she was alive. She was sitting on a stone bench at the edge of a clearing where there’s an old chapel and she was alive. I’d not got from her what I wanted to get, but I didn’t hurt her. I came home the next day so you’d think I’d gone to Holland, and I threw those tickets in the rubbish bin. That’s where you found them.”

“No,” she said. “Absolutely not. And
if
I had found them and been confused by them, I would’ve talked to you. I would’ve asked you why you lied to me. You know that, Gordon.”

“So how do the cops—”

“Rob Hastings told you they have the tickets?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Then Rob Hastings is lying. He wants you to be blamed. He wants you to …I don’t know …to do something crazy so the police will think…Good heavens, Gordon,
he
could’ve gone through the rubbish himself, found those tickets, and handed them over to the police. Or he could be holding on to them, just waiting for the moment to use them against you. Or if not him, then someone else with equal dislike for you. But why would I do anything with any tickets other than simply talk to you about them? Have I the slightest reason to do something that might cause you trouble? Look at me. Have I?”

“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.”

M
EREDITH 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.