“Think that’s amusing, do you, Frank?” Robbie asked the dog. “You’re a real sight. You know that, eh? I shouldn’t let you near the house.”
But no woman lived there to admonish him or to usher Frank from the house herself. So when he went inside and the dog tagged along, Robbie allowed it and was grateful for the company. He fetched the Weimaraner a fresh bowl of water. Frank slopped it happily onto the kitchen floor.
Robbie left him to it and went for the stairs. He was sweaty and he smelled all of horse from transporting the pony, but instead of heading for a shower-he could hardly be bothered with that at this time of day, as he’d only get sweaty and smelly again-he went into Jemima’s room.
He told himself to be calm. He couldn’t think if he got himself into a state, and he needed to think. In his experience, there was an explanation for everything, and there was going to be an explanation for the rest of what Meredith Powell had told him.
“Her clothes are there, Rob. But not in the bedroom. He’s boxed them all up and he’s put them in the attic. Gina found them because, she said, there was something a little strange-that’s how she put it-when he was talking about Jemima’s car.”
“So she did what? Take you up to see them? Up to the attic?”
“She just told me about them at first,” Meredith said. “I asked to look. I reckoned they could’ve been there awhile-from before Gordon and Jemima took the place-so they could’ve been someone else’s. But they weren’t. The boxes weren’t old, and there was something I recognised. Well, it was mine, actually, and she’d borrowed it and I’d never got it back. So you see…?”
He did and he didn’t. Had he not heard from his sister at least weekly since her departure, he would have headed to Sway at once, determined to have a face-to-face with Gordon Jossie. But he had heard from her and what she’d repeated at the end of each phone call had been the reassurance, “Not to worry, Rob. It’ll all come right.”
He’d said at first, “What’ll all come right?” and she’d sidestepped the question. Her avoidance had forced him more than once to ask, “Did Gordon do something to you, my girl?” to which she’d replied, “Of course not, Rob.”
Robbie knew he’d now have assumed the worst had Jemima not stayed in touch: Gordon had killed her and buried her on the property somewhere. Or out on the Forest and deep within a wood so that if her body were ever found, it would be in fifty years, when it was too late to matter. Somehow, an unspoken prophecy-a belief or a fear-would have been fulfilled by her disappearance because the truth of the matter was-he did not like Gordon Jossie. He’d said to her often enough, “There’s something about him, Jemima,” to which she’d laughed and replied, “You mean he’s not like you.”
He’d been forced finally to agree with her. It was easy to like and embrace people just like oneself. It was another matter with people who were different.
In her bedroom now, he phoned her again. Again, no reply. Just the voice, and he left a message once he was asked to do so. He kept it cheerful to match her own tone. “Hey, birthday girl, ring me, eh? Not like you not to get back in touch and I’m having a bit of a worry, I am. Merry Contrary came to see me. She had a cake for you, luv. Got itself all melted in the bloody heat but it’s the thought, eh? Ring me, luv. I want to tell you about the foals.”
He found he wanted to go on a bit, but he was talking into a void. He didn’t want to leave his sister a message. He wanted his sister herself.
He walked to her bedroom window, its sill yet another depository for what Jemima Clutterduck could not bear to part with, which was nearly everything she’d ever possessed. In this spot, it was plastic ponies, crammed one upon the next and covered with dust. Beyond them he could see the real thing: his horses in the paddock with the sunlight glowing off their well-groomed coats.
The fact that Jemima had not returned for the foaling season was what should have told him, he thought. It had long been her favourite time of year. Like him, she was of the New Forest. He’d sent her to college in Winchester as he himself had been sent, but she’d come home when her course work was completed, rejecting computer technology for baking. “I belong here,” she’d told him. As indeed she did.
Perhaps she’d gone to London not for time to think but just for time. Perhaps she’d wanted to break it off with Gordon Jossie but hadn’t known how else to bring it about. Perhaps she reckoned if she was gone long enough, Gordon would find someone else and she herself could then return. But none of that was in character, was it?
Not to worry, she’d say. Not to worry, Rob.
What a monstrous joke.
Chapter Four
DAVID EMERY CONSIDERED HIMSELF ONE OF STOKE NEWINGTON’S very few Cemetery Experts, which he always thought of in uppercase letters, David being an Uppercase sort of bloke. He’d made an understanding of Abney Park Cemetery his Life’s Work (another uppercase situation for him), and it had taken him ages of wandering and getting lost and refusing to be cowed by the general creepiness of the area before he was willing to call himself its Master. He’d been locked in more times than he could begin to count, but he’d never let the cemetery’s nightly closure impinge upon his plans while he was there. If he arrived at any of the gates and found them chained against his wishes, he didn’t bother to ring the Hackney police for rescue as the sign on the gate recommended he do. For him, it was no huge matter just to hoist himself up the railings and over the top, landing either in Stoke Newington High Street or, preferably, in the back garden of one of the terrace houses that lined the cemetery’s northeast boundary.
Making himself a Master of the Park allowed him to use its paths and crannies in any number of ways but particularly in ways amorous. He did this several times a month. He was good with the ladies-they often told him he had soulful eyes, whatever that meant-and since One Thing generally led to Another with women in David’s life, a suggestion that they take a stroll in the park was rarely refused, especially since park was such a…well, such an innocuous word compared to cemetery, wasn’t it.
His intention was always a shag. Indeed, taking a walk, having a stroll, or going for a bit of a wander were all euphemisms for shagging, and the ladies knew that although they pretended not to. They would always say things like, “Oooh, Dave, that place gives me the jumps, it does,” or words to that effect, but they were perfectly willing to accompany him there once he put an arm round them-going for a bit of breast with his fingers if he could-and told them they’d be safe with him.
So in they’d go, directly through the main gates, which was his preferred route as the path was broad and less intimidating there than it was if they entered by means of Stoke Newington Church Road. There you were beneath the trees and in the clutches of the gravestones before you’d gone twenty yards. On the main path you had at least the illusion of safety till you veered right or left onto one of the narrower routes that disappeared into the towering plane trees.
On this particular day, Dave had coaxed Josette Hendricks to come along with him. At fifteen Josette was a little younger than Dave was accustomed to, not to mention the fact that she was something of a giggler, which he hadn’t known until he got her onto the first of the narrow paths, but she was a pretty girl with a lovely complexion and those luscious baps of hers were no small matter, in more ways than one. So when he said, “What d’you say to the park?” and she said, all bright eyed and moist lipped, “Oh yes, Dave,” off they went.
He had a little hollow in mind, a place created by a fallen sycamore behind a tomb and between two gravestones. There, Interesting Developments could occur. But he was too much the schemer to head to the hollow straightaway. He started off with a bit of hand-in-hand statue gazing-“Oooh, dead sad that little angel looks, eh?”-and went on from there to a hand on the back of the neck, a caress-“Dave, that makes me go all tingly!”-and the kind of kiss that suggested but nothing more.