“Why bother, then?”

“To sober you up? I wanted to toss round ideas with you, and I could hardly do that if you were in a stupor.”

“Why?”

“I like the give and take of a partnership. It’s how I work best, Isabelle.”

“You were meant to do this.” She touched her fingers to her chest, seeming to indicate with this gesture that she was referring to the superintendent’s job. “I wasn’t,” she added. “That’s clear enough now.”

“I wouldn’t say that. You made the point yourself: The case is complicated. You’ve been handed something with a learning curve steeper than any curve I’ve had to travel.”

“I don’t believe that at all, Thomas. But thank you for saying it. You’re a very good man.”

“Often, I think the opposite.”

“You’re thinking nonsense then.” Her eyes held his. “Thomas,” she said, “I…” But then she seemed to lose the courage to say anything more. This seemed uncharacteristic of her, so he waited to hear what she wanted to conclude with. He came down one step. She was directly below him, no longer virtually eye to eye with him but instead her head reaching just beneath his lips.

The silence between them stretched too long. It evolved from quiet into tension. It moved from tension into desire. The most natural thing in the world became the simple movement to kiss her, and when her mouth opened beneath his, that was as natural as the kiss itself. Her arms slipped round him and his round her. His hands slid beneath the dressing gown’s folds to touch her cool, soft skin.

“I want you,” she murmured at last, “to make love to me.”

“I don’t think that’s wise, Isabelle,” he said.

“I don’t care in the least,” she replied.

Chapter Thirty

GORDON HADN’T PHONED THE SCOTLAND YARD DETECTIVE when Gina returned home on the previous night. He wanted instead to watch her. He had to learn exactly what she was doing here in Hampshire. He had to know what she knew.

He was rotten at acting, but that couldn’t be helped. She’d realised something was wrong the moment she’d come onto the property and found him sitting in the front garden at the table in the darkness. She was very late, and he was grateful for this. He let her think that the hour of her return was the reason for his silence and his observation of her.

She said she’d got caught up in things, but she was vague when it came to what those things were. She’d lost track of time, she said, and there she was in a meeting with a social worker from Winchester and another from Southampton, and there was a very, very good chance that from a special programme established for immigrant girls, funding could be diverted for the use of…On and on she chattered. Gordon wondered how he hadn’t seen earlier that words came far too easily to Gina.

They’d got through the rest of the evening and then to bed. She’d spooned against him closely in the darkness and her hips moved rhythmically against his bum. He was meant to turn and take her, and he did his part. They coupled in a furious silence meant to pose as wild desire. They were slick with sweat when the act was done.

She murmured, “Wonderful, darling,” and she cradled him as she fell into sleep. He remained awake, with despair rising in him. Which way to turn was his only concern.

In the morning she was wanton, as she’d been so often, her eyelids fluttering open, her long slow smile, her stretching of limbs, the dance of her body as she eased beneath the sheet to find him with her mouth.

He pulled himself away abruptly. He swung out of bed. He didn’t shower but dressed in what he’d worn on the previous day and went downstairs to the kitchen where he made himself coffee. She joined him there.

She hesitated at the doorway. He was at the table, beneath the shelf where Jemima had displayed a row of her childhood plastic ponies, a minor representation of one of her many collections of items she couldn’t bear to part with. He couldn’t remember where he’d put those plastic ponies now, and this concerned him. His memory didn’t generally give him any problems.

Gina cocked her head at him, and her expression was soft. “You’re worried about something. What’s happened?”

He shook his head. He wasn’t yet ready. Speaking wasn’t the difficult part for him. It was listening that he didn’t want to face.

“You didn’t sleep, did you?” she asked. “What’s wrong? Will you tell me? Is it that man again…?” She indicated the out-of-doors.

The driveway onto the property was just outside the kitchen window, so he assumed she was talking about Whiting and wondering if there’d been another visit from him while she’d been gone from home. There hadn’t, but Gordon knew there would be. Whiting had not yet got what he wanted.

Gina went to the fridge. She poured an orange juice. She was wearing a linen dressing gown, naked beneath it, and the morning sunlight made of her body a voluptuous silhouette. She was, he thought, a real man’s woman. She knew the power of the sensual. She knew that when it came to men, the sensual always overwhelmed the sensible.

She stood at the sink, looking out of the window. She said something about the morning. It was not yet hot, but it would be. Was it more difficult, she wanted to know, working with reeds when the day was so hot?

It didn’t seem to bother her when he didn’t reply. She bent forward as if something outside had caught her attention. Then she said, “I can help you with clearing the rest of the paddock now the horses are gone.”

Horses. He wondered for the first time at the word, at the fact that she called them horses instead of what they were, which was ponies. She’d called them horses from the first, and he hadn’t corrected her because…Why? he wondered. What had she represented to him that he hadn’t wondered about all the things that had told him from the first there was something wrong?

She continued. “I’m happy to do it. I could use the exercise and I’ve nothing on for today anyway. They think it’ll take a week or so for the money to come through, less if I’m lucky.”

“What money?”

“For the programme.” She turned to look at him. “Have you forgotten already? I told you last night. Gordon, what’s wrong?”

“D’you mean the west paddock?” he asked her.

She looked puzzled before she apparently twigged how his line of thought was zigzagging. “Helping you clear the rest of the west paddock?” she clarified. “Yes. I c’n work on that overgrown bit by the old section of fence. Like I said, the exercise would be-”

“Leave the paddock alone,” he said abruptly. “I want it left the way it is.”

She seemed taken aback. But she collected herself enough to curve her lips in a smile and say, “Darling, of course. I was only trying to-”

“That detective was here,” he told her. “That woman who came before with the black.”

“The Scotland Yard woman?” she asked. “I can’t remember her name.”

“Havers,” he said. He reached beneath a holder for paper napkins that stood on the table, and he brought out the card that DS Havers had given him.

“What did she want?” Gina asked.

“She wanted to talk about thatching tools. Crooks, especially. She was interested in crooks.”

“Whatever for?”

“I think she could be considering a new line of work.”

She touched her throat. “You’re joking, of course. Gordon, darling, what are you talking about? You don’t look at all well. Can I do something…?”

He waited for her to finish, but she didn’t. Her words drifted off and she was left gazing upon him, as if waiting for inspiration. He said, “You knew her, didn’t you?”

“I’ve never seen her before in my life. How would I know her?”

“I’m not talking about the detective,” he said. “I’m talking about Jemima.”

Her eyes widened. “Jemima? How on earth could I have known Jemima?”

“From London,” he said. “That’s why you call them horses, isn’t it? You’re not from round here. You’re not even from Winchester, and you’re not from the countryside. It’s to do with their size but you wouldn’t know that, would you? You knew her from London.”