This Body of Death

by Elizabeth George

  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.

  HE 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.

  They’d interrupted her in the midst of what looked like a spate of gardening in the paddock where Gordon kept ponies off the forest when they needed special care. She’d been clearing out a mass of growth on the northwest edge of the paddock and she’d uncovered an old stone trough that had likely been there for two hundred years.

  She’d said, “What the hell are you …,” when she’d turned from what she was doing and spied Meredith being frog-marched in her direction. She’d added, “Oh, Christ, Fraze. What in God’s name happened?”

  To which he answered, “A surprise, I’m afraid.”

  She cast a hurried look at Meredith before she said to him, “And did you have to—”

  “Couldn’t leave her there now, could I, George?”

  “Well, this is just grand. What in God’s name’re we supposed to do with her?” She gestured towards her gardening project. “It’s got to be here. There’s nowhere else. We don’t have time to mess about with any more problems than we already have.”

  “That can’t be helped.” Frazer sounded quite philosophical. “I didn’t meet her in the street, did I. She broke into your bed-sit. She’s got to be dealt with and there’s an end to it. And it makes more sense to deal with her here than anywhere else.”

  Got to be dealt with. Meredith felt her bowels loosen. She said, “You mean to blame Gordon, don’t you? That’s what you did from the first.”

  “So as you see … ?” Frazer said to Gina. He had a meaningful tone to his voice.

  It didn’t take genius to work out what he meant: The bloody cow has got to the bottom of things and now she’s got to die. They would kill her the same way they had killed Jemima. Then they would plant her body—that was the word for it, wasn’t it?—on Gordon’s holding. Perhaps she’d lie undiscovered for a day or a week or a month or a year. But when she was discovered, Gordon would take the blame because the two of them would be long gone. But why? Meredith wondered. “Why?”

  She hadn’t realised she’d spoken till Frazer’s arm tightened round her waist and the tip of his weapon dipped into her skin. She felt the skin break and she whimpered and he murmured, “Just a taste,” and “Shut the fuck up.” And then he said to Gina, “We need a grave.” He gave a rough laugh as he noted, “Hell, you were going to dig anyway. It’ll just be a two-for-one deal.”

  “Right here in the paddock?” Gina asked. “Why the hell would anyone ever believe that he’d bury her here?”

  “We don’t have the luxury of answering that question, do we,” he noted. “Start digging, Georgina.”

  “We don’t have the time.”

  “We don’t have a choice. It doesn’t have to be deep. Just enough to cover her body. Get a better shovel. There has to be one in the barn.”

  “I don’t want to see it when you—”

  “Fine. Shut your God damn eyes when it comes down to it. But just get the fucking shovel and start digging her sodding grave because I can’t fucking kill her till we’ve got a place where she can bleed out.”

  Meredith whimpered again. “Please. I’ve a little girl. You can’t.”

  “Oh that’s where you’re very much wrong,” Frazer said.

  THEY RODE IN silence. Whiting occasionally broke it with a lilting tune that he whistled in some merriment. Tess occasionally broke it with a long whine that told Gordon the dog understood something was wrong.

  The journey took no longer than it would ever have taken to bridge the distance between Fritham and Sway in the middle of the day. It felt as if they were crawling, though. It seemed to him he’d be trapped forever in the passenger seat of Whiting’s car.

  When they finally turned into Paul’s Lane, Whiting gave him his instructions: one suitcase and he was meant to pack it in a quarter of an hour. As to Gordon’s question of what would be done with the rest of his belongings …He would have to take that up with whatever authority came to fetch him since the matter was of no interest to Whiting.

  The chief superintendent made a gun of his thumb and index finger and used his next statement as the trigger which he cocked while saying, “Consider yourself lucky I didn’t pull the plug on you when I first got told about that little trip of yours up to London. Could have done it then, you know,” he said. “Consider yourself bloody well lucky.”

  Gordon saw how it had worked in Whiting’s mind and understood how his trip to London—revealed to Whiting by Gina, there could be no doubt of that—had obliterated whatever caution Whiting might have felt in dealing with him in the past. Before that trip to London, Whiting had merely lurked on the periphery of his life, showing up to make sure he was “keeping the snout clean,” as he’d put it time and again, intimidating him, but not crossing any lines other than those defined by garden bullying. Learning he’d been to London, however, and connecting that knowledge to Jemima’s death had opened the floodgates that had previously held back the waters of the chief superintendent�
�s loathing. One word from him to the Home Office and Gordon Jossie went back inside, a violator of the conditions of his release, and always a danger to society. The Home Office would remove his liberty first and ask questions later. Gordon had known how it would play out and this knowledge had kept him cooperative.

  And now …At this point Whiting could hardly tell the Home Office about Gordon’s journey up to London on the day that Jemima had died. Questions would arise concerning Whiting’s possession of this knowledge. Gina could step forward and disclose exactly when she’d passed the information along. Whiting would be forced to explain Gordon’s continued liberty, then, and the chief superintendent wouldn’t want to do that. Better to have his final bit of fun at Eyeworth Pond and then hand Gordon over to whoever was coming to fetch him.

  He said to Whiting, “It doesn’t actually matter to you that she’s dead, does it?”

  Whiting glanced at him. Behind his dark glasses, his eyes were shielded. But his lips moved with distaste. He said, “You want to yammer about someone’s dying, do you?”

  Gordon said nothing.

  “Ah. Yes. I shouldn’t think that’s a conversation the likes of you would ever want to have. But we c’n have it if you like, you and I. I’m not averse, you know.”

  Gordon looked out of the window. He understood that it would always come down to this in the end. Not only between himself and Whiting, but also between himself and anyone. That would, eternally, be the measure of his life, and he’d been mad to think otherwise, even for a moment and especially in the moment those years ago when he’d accepted Jemima Hastings’ invitation for drinks at her brother’s house. He wondered what he’d been thinking in deciding he could have a normal life. Half mad and three-quarters lonely, he’d thought. That was him in a tablespoon. The companionship of a dog was not enough.

  When they came to his holding, he immediately saw the cars in the driveway. He recognised both. Gina was at home, but Meredith Powell was also there for some reason. He said to Whiting, “How d’you want to manage this, then?” as the chief superintendent pulled past the cottage and parked in front of the hedge. “Can’t exactly call it an arrest, can you? All things considered.”

  Whiting looked at his watch. Gordon reckoned the chief superintendent was thinking about the wheres and the whens: where he was supposed to hand Gordon over to the Home Office and at what time. He was likely also considering how much time had already passed since the Home Office had told him to collect Gordon, time accounted for by their interlude together at Eyeworth Pond. The clock was ticking, so they could hardly come back later for his belongings once Gina and Meredith were off the holding.

  He reckoned Whiting would tell him he’d have to leave without the previously allowed single suitcase. He worked it out that Whiting would tell him his things—such as they were—would be sent along later. But instead, Whiting said with a smile, “Oh, I do expect you’ll come up with something interesting to tell them, my dear,” and Gordon realised that the chief superintendent saw this as part of the overall fun he intended to have at Gordon’s expense. First Eyeworth Pond and now this: Gordon packing and having to come up with a reason that would explain to Gina why he was about to disappear.

  Whiting said, “Quarter hour. I wouldn’t waste a second of it chatting with the ladies, me. But you c’n use it as you like. The dog stays here, by the way. To make certain. You know. Call it insurance.”

  “Tess won’t like it,” Gordon said.

  “She will if you tell her. You’ve a way with the ladies, don’t you, my love?”

  At that, Gordon realised it was actually to his benefit to have the retriever remain in the car. If Tess bounded out, she would no doubt set out to find Gina, thus betraying his own presence. Without her, he might be able to get into the cottage by the front door, make his way quietly upstairs, do what he needed to do, and leave unseen. No explanation required. No conversation at all.

  He nodded at Whiting, told the dog to stay, and got out of the car. He reckoned Gina and Meredith were inside the cottage, probably in the kitchen, but in any case not upstairs in the bedroom. If he went in the front door, he could ease up the stairs without being seen. The floors creaked like hell, but that couldn’t be helped. He’d do what he could to be quiet and he’d hope that whatever conversation they were having would be sufficient to cover his noise. As to why Meredith was there on the property …He didn’t see how working out the answer to that was going to get him anywhere. He also couldn’t see that it mattered.

  Once in the front door, he listened for their voices. But the cottage was silent. He moved quietly for the stairs. The only sound was from his weight upon them as he climbed.

  He went to the bedroom. A single suitcase and a quarter hour. Gordon knew that Whiting would be as good as his word. One minute more and he’d come sauntering onto the property, leaving Gordon to explain why he was being carted off or perhaps doing the honours himself.

  Gordon fetched his suitcase from beneath the bed. He went to the chest of drawers and slid the top one open. The chest of drawers was next to the window, and he was careful with his movement here, trying to keep out of sight. For if Gina and Meredith were outside and looked up …He gave a glance to make sure.

  He saw them at once. The window overlooked the driveway and part of the west paddock, empty now of the ponies he’d used to keep Gina from going inside the inclosure. She was inside the paddock now, and so was Meredith. But with them was a man he didn’t recognise. He was standing behind Meredith and he was gripping her round the waist in a manner that suggested she wasn’t a willing participant in what was going on. And what was going on was a spate of digging. Gina had one of the shovels from the barn and she was frantically applying it to a rectangle of earth just beyond the old horse trough. She’d cleared away a mass of vegetation, he saw. She must have been working like mad since she’d returned from wherever she’d gone that morning.

  At first he thought what an excellent job he’d done. Things looked exactly as he hoped they would look. Then he realised that he owed Jemima a debt of gratitude for this moment. She clearly had revealed some of the truth, but she had, for some reason, not told it all. Perverse loyalty to him? Suspicion of the other? He wouldn’t ever know.

  He started to move from the window, knowing that the three of them would dig all the way to China before they found what they were looking for. But Meredith made a sudden move—as if she was trying to escape the hold the strange bloke had on her—and in doing so, she swung round and he swung with her so that they were no longer facing Gina and her digging but rather the cottage.

  Gordon saw the bloke held something to Meredith’s neck, and his glance went from the couple to Gina. He clocked what Gina was actually doing, the size and the shape of it, and he whispered a curse. She was digging a grave.

  So these were Jemima’s killers, he thought. He’d been sleeping with one of them. She was the woman from London that the Scotland Yard detective had declared was in the pictures of that photo show. She’d come to Hampshire in order to snare him and, eternal fool that he was, he’d walked right into her arms.

  He saw how he’d helped them by placing those bloody postcards round. Have you seen this woman? and of course they had. Jemima had confided in the bloke. The bloke had confided in Gina. They’d set the rest up from there: one of them in London and one of them in Hampshire, and when the time was right, the rest was child’s play. A phone call to Hampshire, made by the bloke. This is where she is. This is where you can find her. And then the wait to see what he would do.

  And now this moment, outside, in the paddock. This was meant to be as well. There was going to be another body. But this one on his very own property.

  He didn’t know how they’d managed to pick up Meredith Powell and get her here. He didn’t know why they’d done so. But as he watched, he saw what they intended as clearly as if the plan had been his own. The conclusion to it all was written out before him.

  He headed for the stairs
.

  ONCE GINA DICKENS began to dig in earnest, Barbara phoned nine, nine, nine. She reckoned Frazer was going to wait to dispatch his captive till he had a place to put her body. The only way to make it look as if Gordon Jossie had killed her was to plant her somewhere and hope to avoid detection till she’d been in the ground long enough to make the exact time of death—and hence Jossie’s alibi—somewhat uncertain. This required a grave.

  To her credit Meredith Powell wasn’t cooperatively waiting for the blow that would kill her. She struggled as best she could. When she did so, though, Frazer applied the crook to her neck. She was bleeding profusely down the front of her body, but he’d so far avoided making the blow fatal. Just enough to settle her, Barbara thought. What a piece of work he was.

  When her call went through, Barbara identified herself in a whisper. She knew the emergency operator could be anywhere in Hampshire and this, in combination with her own inability to make perfectly specific her exact location, meant that timely intervention was unlikely. But she reckoned Chief Superintendent Whiting knew where Gordon Jossie lived, so that was the information she passed along: ring the Lyndhurst station, tell Chief Superintendent Whiting to send backup at once to Gordon Jossie’s holding outside of Sway, he knows where it is, I’m on the property, a woman’s life hangs in the balance, for God’s sake hurry, send an armed response team and do it now.

  Then she turned off her mobile. She had no weapon, but the odds were even. She was fully capable of bluffing with the best of them and, if she had nothing else on her side, she still had surprise. It was time to use it.

  She headed towards the far side of the barn.