This Body of Death (75 page)

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.

M
EREDITH’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.

B
ARBARA 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.

She reached Jossie’s cottage first, not his driveway. The hawthorn hedge hid the dwelling from the lane, but it also provided her a shelter from being seen. She crept along it far enough to gain a view of the driveway and at least part of the west paddock beyond it. She saw that Frazer Chaplin and his companion had entered that paddock and were crossing it. They passed out of her field of vision, though, within ten yards.

She went back along the hedge. She didn’t fancy clawing her way through it. It was thickly grown and for all practical purposes impassable, so she needed another way to get onto Jossie’s property. She found this way where the hedge made an angle and headed inwards to run along part of the property’s east boundary. There, she discovered, it gave onto another paddock defined by the same wire fencing that was used elsewhere on Jossie’s land. This was easier to climb through, and she did so. Now what stood between her and the west paddock and Frazer Chaplin within that paddock was the barn in which Jossie kept Jemima’s car and his thatching equipment. If she circled that barn, she knew she would arrive at the north side of the west paddock, where Frazer Chaplin had taken the woman who was with him.

There was no immediate sign of Gina Dickens, but as Barbara slunk in the direction of the barn and towards its rear, she could see Gina’s well-kept Mini Cooper in the drive. Now was the moment to phone for backup, but before she did that, she had to make certain that the shiny red vehicle did indeed indicate the presence of its owner.

She gained the rear of the barn. Behind it, some fifty yards away, the woods began, edged thickly with chestnuts and crowned with oaks. They could have afforded her excellent refuge, a place of hiding from which she could observe what was going on in the paddock. But from that distance, there was no way to hear what was being said and, even if she’d had the means to hear, getting to the woods without being seen from the paddock itself was impossible. Even low crawling wouldn’t do it, for the paddock was fenced in wire, not in stone, and the area between paddock and woods afforded only the protection of occasional gorse. Anyone on the outside was going to be easily seen by anyone on the inside.

That worked both ways, though. For from the edge of the barn, Barbara could see within the paddock easily enough. And what she saw when she eased her head round to have a peek was Frazer Chaplin with his fist clenching a weapon and that weapon held to the neck of Meredith Powell. His other arm gripped Meredith round her waist. If she moved, what Frazer held—and it had to be a thatcher’s crook, Barbara reckoned, considering where they were—was going to pierce Meredith Powell’s carotid artery, just as another crook had pierced Jemima’s artery in Abney Park Cemetery.

Backup was utterly useless, Barbara realised. By the time the cops from Lyndhurst arrived, Meredith Powell would likely be severely injured or entirely dead. If that was to be avoided, Barbara was going to have to come up with the way.

H
E CALLED HER
George. Meredith thought, stupidly, What sort of name is that for a woman? until she understood it was short for Georgina. For her part, Gina called him Frazer. And she wasn’t exactly pleased to see him.