This Body of Death (63 page)

T
HE PONY LAY THRASHING ON THE GROUND ON
M
ILL
L
ANE,
which was just outside Burley. It writhed on the ground with both of its back legs broken, desperately attempting to rise and run from the group of people who gathered at the rear end of the car that had hit it. Every few moments it shrieked horribly as it arched its back and flailed its legs.

Robbie Hastings pulled over to the narrow bit of verge. He told Frank to stay, and he got out of the vehicle and into the noise: pony, conversation, cries. As he approached the scene, one of the group broke away and strode to meet him, a man in jeans, Wellingtons, and T-shirt. The jeans were worn and stained brown at the knees.

Rob recognised him from his occasional nights at the Queen’s Head. Billy Rodin, he was called, and he worked as a full-time gardener at one of the large homes along the road. Rob didn’t know which one.

“American.” Billy winced at the noise from the stallion and jerked his thumb at the rest of the group. There were four of them: two middle-aged couples. One of the women was crying, and the other had turned her back on the scene and was biting her hand. “Got confused, is what happened.”

“Wrong side of the road?”

“’Bout it, yeah. Car coming towards’m too fast round that curve.” Billy gestured the way Rob himself had come. “Startled them. They veered right instead of left and then tried to correct, and the stallion was there. Wanted to give ’em a piece of my mind, but lookit ’em, eh?”

“Where’s the other vehicle?”

“Just kept going.”

“Number plates?”

“Didn’t get ’em. I was over there.” Billy pointed towards one of the many brick walls on the lane, this one some fifty yards away.

Rob nodded and went to look at the stallion. The pony screamed. One of the two American men came towards him. He wore dark glasses and a golf shirt with a logo, Bermuda shorts, and sandals. He said, “God damn, I’m sorry. C’n I help you get him into the trailer or something?”

Rob said, “Eh?”

“The trailer. Maybe if we support his rump … ?”

Rob realised that the man actually thought he’d brought the horse trailer for this poor creature on the ground in front of them, perhaps to drive him to some veterinary surgery. He shook his head. “Got to destroy him.”

“We can’t … ? There’s no vet around? Oh shit. Oh damn. Did that guy tell you what happened? There was this other car and I totally blew it because—”

“He told me.” Rob squatted to take a closer look at the pony, whose eyes were rolling and from whose mouth a froth was issuing. He hated the fact that it was one of the stallions. He recognised this one since he and three others had only been moved into Rob’s area to service the mares this past year: a strong young bay with a blaze on his forehead. He should have lived more than twenty years.

“Listen, do we have to stay while you … ?” the man asked. “I only want to know because Cath is upset enough and if she has to watch you kill that horse …She’s a real animal person. This pretty much ruins our vacation anyway—not to mention the front end of the car—and we only got to England three days ago.”

“Go into the village.” Rob told the man how to get there. “Wait for me at the Queen’s Head. You’ll see it on the right. I expect there’re phone calls you need to make anyway, about the car.”

“Look, how bad a trouble’re we in? C’n I make this right somehow?”

“You’re not in trouble. There are just formalities—”

The pony neighed wildly. It sounded like a scream.

“Do something,
do
something,” one of the women cried.

The American nodded and said, “Queen’s Head. Okay,” and then to the others, “Come on. Let’s go.”

They made short work of vacating the scene, leaving Rob, the stallion, and Billy Rodin on the side of the lane. “Worst part of the job, eh?” Billy said. “Poor dumb brute.”

Rob wasn’t sure which of them the phrase suited best: the American, the stallion, or himself. He said, “Happens too often, especially in summer.”

“Need my help?”

Rob told him he didn’t. He would dispatch the poor animal and ring New Forest Hounds to pick up the body. “You needn’t stay,” he told him.

“Right then,” Billy Rodin said, and he headed back to the gardening from which he’d come on the run.

This left Rob to deal with the stallion, and he went to his Land Rover to fetch the pistol. Two ponies in less than a week, he thought. Things were getting worse and worse. His charge was to protect the animals on the forest—especially the ponies—but he didn’t see how he could do it if people didn’t learn to value them. He didn’t blame the poor foolish Americans. Likely they hadn’t been driving fast anyway. Here to see the countryside and to gawk at its beauties, they might have been momentarily distracted by one vista or another, but he suspected that had it not been for the surprise of the other vehicle coming at them, none of this would have happened. He told Frank once more to stay as he jerked open the Land Rover’s door and reached in the back.

The pistol was gone. He saw this at once, and for an unnerving moment, he thought ridiculously that somehow one of the Americans had got it since they’d driven right by the Land Rover on their way towards Burley. Then he thought of the children at Gritnam while he was unloading the two ponies into the woodland just a short time ago.
That
consideration made his stomach churn and drove him to thrust himself into the Land Rover and begin a frantic search. He always kept the pistol secured behind the driver’s seat in a disguised holster fashioned for just this purpose, but it wasn’t there. It hadn’t fallen to the floor, it wasn’t under the seat, nor was it under the passenger’s seat. He thought about the last time he’d used it—the day the two Scotland Yard detectives had found him on the side of the road with another injured pony—and he considered briefly that one of them …perhaps the black man
because
he was black …And then he realised how horrible a thought it was and what it said about him that he even considered it …and behind him the stallion continued to thrash and shriek.

He grabbed up the shotgun. God, he didn’t want to have to do it this way, but he had no choice. He loaded the thing and approached the poor pony, but all the time his mind was feverishly casting up images of the past few days, of all the people who’d been near enough to the Land Rover …

He should have been removing the pistol and the shotgun from the vehicle every evening. He’d been too distracted: Meredith, the Scotland Yard detectives, his own visit to the local police, Gordon Jossie, Gina Dickens …
When
had he last removed the pistol and the shotgun as he was meant to do anyway? He couldn’t say.

But there was a single certainty and he damn well knew it. He had to find that gun.

M
EREDITH
P
OWELL FACED
her boss, but she couldn’t look at him. He was in the right and she was in the wrong and there were no two ways about it. She
had
been off her stride. She
had
been enormously distracted. She
had
been ducking out of the office on the least pretext. She certainly couldn’t deny any of this, so what she did was nod. She felt as humiliated as she’d ever felt, even in the worst moments all those years ago in London when she’d had to face the fact that the man to whom she’d given her love had been merely a worthless object of a feminine fantasy long fed by the cinema, by certain novels, and by advertising agencies.

“So I want to see a change,” Mr. Hudson was saying as a conclusion to his remarks. “Can you guarantee a change, Meredith?”

Well, of course she could. That was what he expected her to say, so she said it. She added that her dearest and oldest friend had been murdered in London recently and that was causing her to be preoccupied, but she would pull herself together.

“Yes, yes, I’m sorry about that,” Mr. Hudson said abruptly, as if he was already in possession of the facts surrounding Jemima’s death, as indeed he likely was. “Tragedy, it is. But life continues for the rest of us, and it’s not going to continue if we let the walls collapse round our ears, is it.”

No, no, of course. He was right. She
was
sorry she’d not been pulling her weight round Gerber & Hudson, but she would resume doing so the very next day. That is, unless Mr. Hudson wanted her to remain into the evening to make up for lost time, which she would do except that she had a five-year-old at home and—

“That won’t be necessary.” Mr. Hudson used a letter opener to clean beneath his fingernails, digging round industriously in a way that made Meredith feel rather faint. “As long as I see the old Meredith back here at her desk tomorrow.”

He would, oh he
would
, Meredith vowed. Thank you, Mr. Hudson. I appreciate your confidence in me.

When he dismissed her, she returned to her cubicle. End of the day, so she could go home. But to leave so soon on the heels of Mr. Hudson’s reprimand would not look good no matter how he’d concluded their interview. She knew that she ought to spend at least one hour longer than usual with her nose to the grindstone of whatever it was that she was supposed to be doing.

Which, of course, she could not remember. Which, of course, had been Randall Hudson’s point.

She had a pile of telephone messages on her desk, so she fingered through these in the hope of finding a clue. There were certainly names and there were pointed questions and ultimately she reckoned she
could
start looking a few things up since most everyone seemed to be concerned about how the designs for this and for that were coming along, according to the messages. But her heart wasn’t in it, and her mind would not cooperate at all. She had, she concluded, far more important subjects with which to be concerned than the colour scheme she would recommend for the advertisement of a local bookshop’s new reading group.

She put the messages to one side. She used the time to straighten her desk. She made an effort to look industrious as her colleagues called out good-byes and faded into the late afternoon, but all the time her thoughts were like a flock of birds circling a food source, lighting upon it briefly and taking flight again. Instead of a food source, though, the flock of birds circled Gina Dickens, only to find out that there were far too many places for them to land without a single one offering either a decent foothold or safety from predation.

But how could it actually be otherwise? Meredith asked herself. For in every matter that touched upon Gina, Meredith had been outmanoeuvred from the first.

She forced herself to consider each of her interactions with the other young woman, and she felt every which way the fool. The truth of the matter was that Gina had read her as easily as she herself read Cammie. She had no more sense and even less art than a five-year-old, and it had likely taken fewer than ten minutes for Gina Dickens to work that out.

She’d done so on the very first day, when Meredith had taken that stupid, melting birthday cake to Jemima’s cottage. Gina had claimed knowledge of nothing relating to Jemima, and Meredith had believed her, just like that. And hearing a claim that the programme for young girls at risk was merely in its embryonic stage, she’d believed that as well. As she had also believed that Gordon Jossie—and not Gina herself, which, let’s face it was far more likely—had gone into London on the very day that Jemima died. As she had also believed that Gordon Jossie—and not Gina herself—had caused the bruising on Gina’s body. As to everything Gina had claimed about a relationship of some sort between Chief Superintendent Whiting and Gordon …Gina could have announced they’d both landed as conjoined twins from Mars and Meredith probably would have believed her.

It seemed that there was only one alternative now. So Meredith rang her mother and told her she’d be just a bit late coming home because she had a stop to make. Fortunately that stop was on the way, so she needn’t worry. And give Cammie a kiss and a cuddle please.

Then she went for her car and headed for Lyndhurst. She put on an affirmation tape to accompany her on the A31. She repeated the sonorous declarations of her ability, her value as a human being, and the possibility of her becoming an agent of change.

The usual rush hour tailback slowed her progress on the Bourne mouth Road as she approached Lyndhurst. The traffic lights in the high street didn’t help matters either, but Meredith found that the repetition of her affirmations kept her centred, so that when she finally reached the police station, her nerves were steady and she was ready to make certain that her demands for action were well understood.

She expected to be thwarted. She reckoned that the special constable in reception would recognise her and, with much eye rolling, would tell her she could not see the chief superintendent on the spur of the moment. This wasn’t, after all, a drop-in centre. Zachary Whiting had more important concerns than to meet with every hysterical woman who happened to call in.

But that didn’t occur. The special constable asked her to be seated, disappeared into the station for less than three minutes, and returned with the request that she follow him because although Chief Superintendent Whiting had intended to leave for the day, once he heard Meredith’s name, he remembered it from her earlier visit—so she
had
given her name, she thought—and asked that she be ushered to his office.

She told him everything. She gave him A to Z and then some on the topic of Gina Dickens. She saved the very best for the end: her own hiring of a private investigator in Ringwood and what that private investigator had turned up about Gina.

Whiting jotted notes throughout. At the end, he clarified that this Gina Dickens was the same woman who had accompanied Meredith to the police station here in Lyndhurst with evidence suggesting that one Gordon Jossie had been in London during the time his former lover had been murdered. This
was
that woman, was it not?