This Body of Death (77 page)

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.

M
EREDITH COULDN’T CRY
out. The pointed thing was inside her flesh for the third time. He’d pierced her neck once, twice, and now again, a different spot each time. The blood was seeping down her bony chest and between her breasts, but she didn’t look to see it for fear she would faint. She was faint enough already.

“Why?” was the only word that escaped her. She knew that
please
was out of the question. And the
why
referred to Jemima, not to her. There were any number of whys that dealt with Jemima. She couldn’t work out why they had killed her friend. She saw that they had likely done it in a way that would lead the police to Gordon. She concluded from this that they wanted both Jemima
and
Gordon out of the way, but she could not come up with a reason for this. And then it didn’t matter, did it, because she was going to die as well. Just like Jemima and for what for what and
what
would become of Cammie. Without a dad. Without a mum. Growing up without knowing how much she …And who would find her? They would bury and then and then and afterwards and God.

She tried to be calm. She tried to think. She tried to plan. It was possible. It was. She could. She needed. And then. There was pain again. Tears seeped though she didn’t want to cry. They came with the blood. She could no more produce a way to save herself from this than she could …what? She didn’t know.

So bloody stupid. Her whole
life
was a shining example of just how stupid one person could be. No brains, girl. Completely utterly maddeningly incapable of reading a person for what he was. For what she was. For what
anyone
was. And now here …So what are you waiting for? she asked herself. Are you waiting for what you’ve always been waiting for …rescue from where you’ve placed yourself for being so bloody-minded since the day you were born that—

“This is where it stops.”

Everything halted. The world spun but then it was not the world at all but the man who held her who was spinning round and she went with him and there was Gordon.

He’d come into the paddock. He was coming forward. He held a pistol …of all things a
pistol
and where in God’s name had Gordon got himself a pistol …and had he always had a pistol and why and—

She felt weak with relief. She wet herself. Hot urine splashed down her leg. It was over, over, over. But the bloke didn’t release her. Nor did he ease his grip.

He said to Gina, “Ah. I see we’ll need to make it deeper, George,” every bit as if he wasn’t the least bit fazed by what Gordon Jossie was holding.

Gordon said, unaccountably, “And it’s not there, Gina,” with a nod to where she’d been clearing the paddock. “That’s why you killed her, though, isn’t it?” And to the stranger, “You heard me. This stops here. Let her go.”

“Or what?” the man said. “You’ll shoot me? Be the hero? Have your picture on the front of all the papers? On the evening news? On the morning chat shows? Tsk, tsk, Ian. You can’t want that. Keep digging, George.”

“She told you, then,” Gordon said in reply.

“Well, of course she did. One asks, you know. After all, she didn’t want you to find her. She was …well, I don’t mean to offend, but she was rather repelled once she knew who you are. Then when she saw those postcards …She came home in a panic and …One
asks
when one’s lover—sorry, George, but I think we’re even on that score aren’t we, darling—one does ask. She loathed you just enough to tell me. You should have left well alone, you know, once she’d taken herself off to London. Why didn’t you, Ian?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“It’s who you are, isn’t it? George, darling, it
is
Ian Barker, isn’t it? Not one of the other two. Not Michael or Reggie. But he talks about them when he’s dreaming, right?”

“Nightmares,” Gina said. “Such nightmares. You can’t imagine.”

“Let her go.” Gordon gestured with the pistol.

The man tightened his grip. “Can’t, won’t,” he said. “Not so close to the finish. Sorry, lad.”

“I’m going to shoot you, whoever you are.”

“Frazer Chaplin, at your service,” he said. He sounded quite cheery. He gave a little twist to what he held at Meredith’s neck. She cried out. He said, “So yes indeed, she saw those postcards, Ian, my friend. She panicked. She ran hither and yon talking nonsense about how this bloke in Hampshire mustn’t ever find her. So one asked why. Well one
would
do. And out it all tumbled. Nasty little boy, weren’t you? There’s lots out there who’d like to find you. People don’t forget. Not that kind of crime. Which is why, of course, you’re not going to shoot me. Aside from the fact that you’d likely miss and hit poor little Meredith right in the head.”

“Not a problem, as I see it,” Gordon said. He swung the gun towards Gina. “She’s the one to be shot. Throw the shovel down, Gina. This business is finished. The hoard’s not there, Meredith’s not dying, and I don’t bloody care who knows my name.”

Meredith whimpered. She had no idea what they were talking about, but she tried to extend a hand of thanks to Gordon. He’d sacrificed something. She didn’t know what. She didn’t know why. But what it meant was—

Pain ripped into her. Fire and ice. It shot upward into her head and through her eyes. She felt something bursting and something else releasing. She toppled, unstrung, to the ground.

B
ARBARA HAD GAINED
the southeast corner of the barn when she heard the gunshot. She’d been moving stealthily but she froze in place. Only for an instant, however. A second shot went off and she charged round to the front. She gained the paddock and threw herself inside. She heard noise behind her, heavy footsteps running in her direction and a man’s harsh yelling of
Drop that fucking gun!

She took it all in like a frozen tableau. Meredith Powell on the ground with a rusty crook sticking out of her neck. Frazer Chaplin sprawled not five feet from Gordon Jossie. Gina Dickens backed into the wire fence with her hand clasped over her mouth. Jossie himself with the pistol held stiffly, still in position from the second shot he’d fired straight into the air.

“Barker!” It was a roar, not a voice from Chief Superintendent Whiting. He was storming up the driveway. “Lay that God damn gun on the ground. Do it now. Now! You heard me. Now!”

And then, passing Whiting, the dog, of all things. Bounding forward. Howling. Running in circles.

“Drop it, Barker!”

“You’ve shot him! You’ve killed him!” Gina Dickens at last. Screaming, running to Frazer Chaplin, throwing herself on him.

“Backup’s coming, Mr. Jossie,” Barbara said. “Put the gun—”

“Stop him! He’ll kill me next!”

The dog barked and barked.

“See to Meredith,” Jossie said. “Someone God damn see to Meredith.”

“Drop the bloody gun first.”

“I told you—”

“Want her to die as well? Just like the boy? You get off on death, Ian?”

Jossie turned the gun then. He pointed it at Whiting. “Some deaths,” he said. “Some God damn deaths.”

The dog howled.

“Don’t shoot it!” Barbara cried. “Don’t do it, Mr. Jossie.” She dashed to the crumpled figure of Meredith. The crook was planted to its halfway point, but not into the jugular vein. She was conscious but overcome by shock. Time was crucial. Jossie needed to know it. She said, “She’s alive. Mr. Jossie, she’s alive. Put the gun down. Let us get her out of here. There’s
nothing
else you need to do at this point.”

“You’re wrong. There is,” Jossie said. He fired again.

J
UDI
M
AC
I
NTOSH TOLD
L
YNLEY TO GO STRAIGHT IN
. T
HE
assistant commissioner was waiting for him, she said. Did he want a coffee? Tea? She sounded grave. As she would do, Lynley thought. Word, as always and especially when it had to do with death, had traveled quickly.

He demurred politely. He wouldn’t actually have minded a cup of tea but he hoped he wouldn’t be spending a long enough time in Hillier’s office to drink it down.

The assistant commissioner rose to meet him. He joined Lynley at the conference table. He dropped into a chair and said, “What a bloody cock-up. Do we at least know how the hell he got his hands on a gun?”

“Not yet,” Lynley said. “Barbara’s working on that.”

“And the woman?”

“Meredith Powell? She’s in hospital. The wound was very bad but not fatal. It came close to the spinal cord, so she could have been crippled. She was lucky.”

“And the other?”

“Georgina Francis? In custody. All in all, it wasn’t exactly textbook, sir, but it was a good result.”

Hillier shot him a look. “A woman murdered in a public park, another woman seriously injured, two men dead, a paranoid schizophrenic in hospital, a lawsuit hanging over our heads …What part of this is actually a good result, Inspector?”

“We’ve got the killer.”

“Who is himself a corpse.”

“We’ve got his accomplice.”

“Who may not ever go to trial for anything. What do we know about this Georgina Francis that we can take into court? She once lived in the same house as the killer. She once was at a National Portrait Gallery show for some reason. She was the killer’s lover. She was the killer’s
killer’s
lover. She may have done this, and she may have done that, and there’s an end to it. Give that information to the CPS and watch them roar.” Hillier raised his eyes heavenward in an uncharacteristic indication of seeking divine guidance. When he apparently had it, he said, “She’s finished. She had a decent opportunity to demonstrate her leadership abilities, and she failed to do so. She alienated members of the team she was working with, she assigned officers inappropriately and without regard for their expertise, she made judgement calls that put the Met into the worst possible position, she undermined confidence in here and out there …Be so good as to tell me, Tommy: Where’s the result?”

Lynley said, “I think we can agree that she was hobbled, sir.”

“Oh, can we? Hobbled by what?”

“By what the Home Office knew and couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell her.” Lynley paused to let his point sink in. There was little enough to use in defence of both Isabelle Ardery and her performance as acting detective superintendent, but he believed he owed it to her to try. He said, “Did you know who he was, sir?”

“Jossie?” Hillier shook his head.

“Did you know he was being protected, then?”

Hillier’s eyes met his. He said nothing, and in that Lynley had his answer. At some point during the investigation, he reckoned, Hillier had been brought into the picture. He may not have been told that Gordon Jossie was one of the three boys responsible for little John Dresser’s terrible murder all those years ago, but he’d known he was someone into whose life no one else was supposed to delve.

Lynley said, “I think she should have been told. Not necessarily who he was but that he was being protected by the Home Office.”

“Do you.” Hillier looked away. He steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “And why is that?”

“It could have led to Jemima Hastings’ killer.”

“Could it indeed.”

“Sir. Yes.”

Hillier observed him. “I take it you’re arguing on her behalf, then. Is this noblesse oblige, Tommy, or have you, perhaps, another reason?”

Lynley didn’t look away. He’d certainly considered this point before coming up to the AC’s office, but he hadn’t been able to get to what felt like the whole truth of the matter as far as his intentions were concerned. He was going on instinct alone, and he had to hope that the instinct he was operating under was the lofty instinct for justice. It was, after all, so easy to lie to oneself when it came to sex.

He said evenly, “It’s neither, sir. She’s had a rough transition with little time to adjust to the job before she was thrust into the middle of an investigation. In addition to that, enquiries into murder beg for facts. She never had them all. And that, with respect, can’t be attributed to her.”

“Are you suggesting—”

“I’m not suggesting it can be attributed to you either, sir. Your hands were tied as well, I suspect.”

“Then … ?”

“It’s because of this that she needs—I think—another opportunity. That’s all. I’m not saying she should be given the position permanently. I’m not saying that you should even consider giving her the position permanently. I’m merely saying that, based upon what I saw during these past days and based upon what you yourself asked me to do with respect to her being here, she should have another go.”

Hillier’s lips curved. It was not a smile so much as it was acknowledgement of a point well made and a point perhaps reluctantly taken. He said, “A compromise, then?”

“Sir?” Lynley said.

“Your presence. Here.” Hillier chuckled, but it seemed self-directed. It declared itself as
Who could have thought I would end up here?

“Back at work at the Met, you mean,” Lynley noted.

“That would be the deal on offer.”

Lynley nodded slowly in comprehension. The assistant commissioner would always, he thought, play a very decent game of chess. They hadn’t come to checkmate yet, but they were close. “May I think about it, sir, before I commit myself?” he asked.

“You absolutely may not,” Hillier said.

I
SABELLE WAS ON
the phone with Chief Superintendent Whiting out of the operational command unit at the Lyndhurst station. The gun in question, he told her, belonged to one of the agisters. He didn’t explain what an agister was and she didn’t ask. She did ask
who
the agister was and how Gordon Jossie had come to have his weapon. The agister turned out to be the brother of their original victim, and he’d reported his gun missing only that morning. He didn’t tell the police, however, not at first and not that it would have helped had he done so. He told the head agister during a meeting, which set the wheels in motion, which was, of course, too late. Jossie, Whiting continued, apparently had the gun upon his person, either in his windcheater’s pocket or tucked into his trousers with the windcheater covering it. Or, Whiting went on as if to test the waters of another theory, he could have been keeping it in the cottage as he’d gone inside to pack. The first theory seemed likeliest, Whiting said. But he gave no cogent reason why.

“There’s a chance a treasure hoard’s involved in all this,” Isabelle told him. “You’ll want to keep an eye out for that.”

A
what?
Whiting wanted to know. Treasure? he asked.
Treasure?
What the hell … ?

“A Roman treasure,” Isabelle told him. “We reckon that’s behind what’s gone on. We reckon Jossie was doing something on the property—likely some kind of work—and he came across the first of it. He was able to sort out what he’d come upon but so was Jemima.”

And then what? Whiting asked.

“She probably wanted to report it. It would be valuable and the law requires that. Considering who he was, though, he probably wanted to keep it buried. He’d have had to tell her why eventually because keeping it buried would’ve made no sense. Once he told her …Well, there she was, living with one of the most notorious child killers we’ve ever locked away. That must have been a rather staggering piece of information for her to process.”

Whiting made a sound of agreement.

“So is there anything on the property to indicate he’d been doing some work? I mean, doing some work during which he might have stumbled upon evidence of a treasure hoard?”

There was, Whiting told her in a meditative tone: Part of a paddock had been refenced while the other part had been left as it was. When everything was blown to hell a short time earlier that day, the woman—Gina Dickens—had been working in part of the paddock that hadn’t yet been seen to. Perhaps that was why … ?

Isabelle thought about this. “It would be the other part,” she noted. “The newer section. The part already worked on. Because it stands to reason that Jossie would have discovered something where he himself had been digging. Any digging that’s gone on there? Anything new in that spot? Anything unusual?”

New fence posts, new wire fencing, new trough, Whiting said. Bloody huge trough if it came down to it. Must’ve weighed half a tonne.

“There you have it,” Isabelle told him. “You know, second thought on this: I’m going to set things in motion myself. From this end. On that score. The treasure. We’ll get the authorities to come out there. You have enough on your plate.” She looked up at a movement in her office doorway. Lynley was standing there. She held up a finger, a gesture that asked him to wait. He came inside and took the seat that angled from her desk. He looked relaxed. She wondered if anything ever ruffled the man.

She completed her phone call. The duty press officer from Lyndhurst would be identifying Gordon Jossie as Ian Barker. While this would undoubtedly drag forth all the details of John Dresser’s inhuman murder once again, the Home Office wanted it known that one of the three killers of the toddler was now dead himself, at his own hand.

Isabelle wondered at this. Was it supposed to be a cautionary tale? Something to give the Dresser family peace at last? Something to strike fear into Michael Spargo and Reggie Arnold, wherever they were? She didn’t see how releasing Gordon Jossie’s true identity would serve to do any of that. But she had no say in the matter.

When she and Whiting rang off, she and Lynley sat in silence for a moment. Outside of her office, the sounds of a day ending were unmistakable. She badly wanted a drink but more badly did she want to know about Lynley’s meeting with Sir David Hillier. She knew that was where he’d disappeared to.

She said, “It’s a form of blackmail.”

He drew his eyebrows together. His lips parted as if he would speak, but he said nothing. He had a faint scar, she noted for the first time, on his upper lip. It looked like quite an old one. She wondered how he’d come to have it.

“What he’s said is that he’ll keep it under wraps as long as the boys stay in Kent with him and Sandra. He says, ‘You don’t want a custody battle over them, Isabelle. You don’t want to end up in court. You know what will come to light and you don’t want that.’ So I’m stuffed. He can destroy my career. And even if he didn’t have that power, I’d lose custody permanently if we went to court. He knows that.”

Lynley was silent at first. He regarded her, and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking although she reckoned it had to do with how to tell her that her career was over anyway, despite her efforts to save it.

When he spoke, however, it was just to say, “Alcoholism.”

She said, “I’m not an alcoholic, Tommy. I drink too much occasionally. Most people do. That’s all.”

“Isabelle …” He sounded disappointed.

She said, “It’s the truth. I’m no more an alcoholic than …than you are. Than Barbara Havers is. Where is she, by the way? How the hell long does it take someone to drive from Hampshire to London?”

He wasn’t to be diverted. He said, “There are cures. There are programmes. There are …You don’t have to live—”

“It was stress,” she said. “How you found me the other night. That’s all it was. For God’s sake, Tommy. You told me yourself that you drank heavily when your wife was murdered.”

He said nothing. But his eyes narrowed the way one’s eyes would do when something is thrown. Sand, a handful of earth, an unkindness.

She said, “Forgive me.”

He stirred in his chair. “He keeps the boys, then?”

“He keeps the boys. I can have …He calls it supervised visits. What he means is that I go to Kent to see them, they don’t come here, and
when
I see them, he and Sandra or he
or
Sandra is present.”

“And that’s how it stands? Till when?”

“Till he decides otherwise. Till he decides what I must do to redeem myself. Till …I don’t know.” She didn’t want to talk more about it. She couldn’t think why she’d told him as much as she had. It indicated an opening where she couldn’t afford one and didn’t want one. She was tired, she thought.

He said, “You stay.”

She didn’t understand at first that he’d switched the topic. “Stay?”

“I don’t know how long. He agrees this wasn’t the best test of your skills.”

“Ah.” She had to admit that she was surprised. “But he did say …Because with Stephenson Deacon …They told me—”

“That was before the Home Office business came to light.”

“Tommy, you and I both know my mistakes had nothing to do with the Home Office and whatever mad secrets they were keeping over there.”

He nodded. “It was useful, nonetheless. Had everything been straightforward from the first, the ending to this story would be different, I daresay.”

She was still astonished. But astonishment slowly gave way to realisation. The assistant commissioner, at the end of the day, would hardly have granted her a stay of professional execution merely because the Home Office hadn’t told her the real identity of Gordon Jossie. There was more involved, and she had a very good idea that the additional bargaining to keep her in place had to do with promises made by Lynley. She said, “Exactly what did you agree to, Tommy?”

He smiled. “You see? You’re learning quickly.”

“
What
did you agree to?”

“Something I was likely to do anyway.”

“You’re coming back permanently.”

“For my sins. Yes.”

“Why?”

“As I said, I was likely—”

“No. I mean why did you do this for me?”