“Why not?”

“What the hell does it matter? What do you want? Why are you here?” He looked round as if he could sort out what she’d been up to by glancing from the barn to the west paddock and from there to the east paddock and from there to the cottage.

The dog picked up on his agitation and began to pace, looking from her master to Barbara. After a few moments, she yelped once and headed for the back door to the cottage. Barbara said to Jossie, “I think your dog wants feeding.”

He said, “I know how to care for a dog.”

He went to the cottage and disappeared inside. Barbara took the opportunity to fetch the magazine she’d had from Lynley when she’d met him earlier on the motorway. She rolled it up and went to the cottage, where she let herself in.

Jossie was in the kitchen, where the dog was gulping down a bowl of dry food. Jossie stood at the sink looking out of the window. It gave a view of his pickup, Barbara’s car, and the paddock beyond. Earlier, she remembered, there’d been animals in it.

“Where’d the horses go?” she asked him.

“Ponies,” he said.

“There’s a difference?”

“They went back on the forest, I presume. I wasn’t here when he fetched them.”

“Who?”

“Rob Hastings. He said he’d come for them. Now they’re gone. I reckon it’s safe to assume he returned them to the forest, as they weren’t likely to let themselves out of the paddock, were they.”

“Why were they here?”

He turned to her. “Prime Minister’s question time,” he said, “is over.”

For the first time he sounded menacing, and Barbara saw a glimpse of the real man beneath the exterior that he kept so controlled. She drew in on her cigarette and wondered about her personal safety. She concluded he was unlikely to dispatch her right there in his kitchen, so she approached him, flicked cigarette ash into the sink, and said, “Sit down, Mr. Jossie. I have something to show you.”

His face hardened. He looked as if he’d refuse at first, but then he went to the table and dropped into a chair. He’d not removed his cap or his sunglasses, but he did so now. “What,” he said. Not even a question. He sounded tired to the bone.

Barbara unrolled the magazine. She found the pages of social photos. She sat down opposite him and turned the magazine so that he could see it. She said nothing.

He glanced at the pictures and then at her. “What?” he said again. “Posh folk drinking champagne. Am I supposed to care about this?”

“Have a closer look, Mr. Jossie. This is the opening of the photo show at the Portrait Gallery. I think you know which show I’m talking about.”

He looked again. She saw that he was giving his attention to the picture of Jemima posing with Deborah St. James, but that was not the picture of interest. She indicated the one in which Gina Dickens appeared.

“We both know who this is, don’t we, Mr. Jossie?” Barbara said to him.

He said nothing. She saw him swallow, but that was his only reaction. He didn’t look up and he didn’t move. She looked at his temple but saw no wild pulsing. There was nothing at all. Not what she’d expected, she thought. Time for a bit of a push.

She said, “Personally, I believe in coincidence. Or synchronicity. Or whatever. These things happen and there’s no doubt about that, eh? But let’s just say that it wasn’t coincidence that Gina Dickens was at the portrait gallery for the opening of this show. That would mean she had a reason to be there. What d’you expect that reason was?”

He didn’t reply, but Barbara knew his mind must be racing.

“P’rhaps she’s wild for photography,” Barbara said. “I s’pose that’s possible. I rather like it myself. P’rhaps she happened to be wandering by and thought she could score a glass of the bubbly and a cheese stick or something. I could see that, as well. But there’s another p’rhaps and I reckon you and I know what it is, Mr. Jossie.”

“No.” He sounded a little hoarse. This was good, Barbara thought.

“Yes,” she said. “P’rhaps she had a reason for being there. P’rhaps she knew Jemima Hastings.”

“No.”

“She didn’t? Or you can’t believe she did?”

He said nothing.

Barbara took out her card, wrote her mobile number on the back, and slid it across the table towards him. “I want to talk to Gina,” she said. “I want you to ring me when she gets home.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

ISABELLE HAD REMAINED AT ST. THOMAS’ HOSPITAL FOR MOST of the afternoon, excavating for information in the twisted passageways that comprised the mind of Yukio Matsumoto when she wasn’t sparring with his solicitor and making promises that she was not remotely authorised to make. The result was that, by the end of the day, she had a disjointed scenario of what had happened in Abney Park Cemetery along with two e-fits. She also had twelve voice messages on her mobile.

Hillier’s office had rung three times, which wasn’t good. Stephenson Deacon’s office had rung twice, which was just as bad. She skipped those five messages plus two from Dorothea Harriman and one from her ex-husband. That left her with messages from John Stewart, Thomas Lynley, and Barbara Havers. She listened to Lynley’s. He’d phoned twice, once about the British Museum, once about Barbara Havers. Although she took note of the fact that the sound of the inspector’s well-bred baritone was vaguely comforting, Isabelle paid scant attention to the messages. For unrelated to the fact of his messages was the additional fact that her insides felt as if they wanted to become her outsides, and while she knew very well that there was one quick way to settle both her stomach and her nerves, she did not intend to employ it.

She drove back to Victoria Street. On the way she phoned Dorothea Harriman and told her to have the team in the incident room for her return. Harriman tried to bring up the subject of AC Hillier-as Isabelle reckoned she might-but Isabelle cut her off with, “Yes, yes, I know. I’ve heard from him as well. But first things first.” She rang off before Harriman told her the obvious: that in Hillier’s head first things first meant attending to Sir David’s desires. Well, that couldn’t matter at the moment. She had to meet with her team, and that took priority.

They were assembled when she arrived. She said, “Right,” as she walked into the room, “we’ve got e-fits on two individuals who were in the cemetery and seen by Yukio Matsumoto. Dorothea’s running them through the copier, so you’ll each have one shortly.” She went over what Matsumoto had told her about that day in Abney Park Cemetery: Jemima’s actions, the two men he’d seen and where he had seen them, and Yukio’s attempt to help Jemima upon finding her wounded in the chapel annex. “Obviously, he made the wound worse when he removed the weapon,” she said. “She would have died anyway, but removing the weapon hastened things. It also got him drenched in her blood.”

“What about his hair in her hand?” It was Philip Hale who asked the question.

“He doesn’t remember her reaching up to him, but she may have done.”

“And he may be lying,” John Stewart noted.

“Having talked to him-”

“Sod talking to him.” Stewart threw a balled-up piece of paper onto his desk. “Why didn’t he phone the police? Go for help?”

“He’s a paranoid schizophrenic, John,” Isabelle said. “I don’t think we can expect rational behaviour from him.”

“But we can expect usable e-fits?”

Isabelle clocked the restless movement among those gathered in the room. Stewart’s tone was, as usual, bordering on snide. He was going to have to be sorted out eventually.

Harriman entered the room, the stack of duplicated e-fits in hand. She murmured to Isabelle that AC Hillier’s office had phoned again, apparently with the knowledge that Acting Superintendent Ardery was now in the building. Should she…?