He said, “If I told them I was in Holland, they’d take it further.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’d want me to prove it.”

“Can’t you? Why would you not be able to prove…? Did you not go to Holland, Gordon?”

“Of course I went. But I tossed the ticket.”

“But there’re records. All sorts of records. And there’s the hotel. And whoever you saw…the farmer…whoever…Who grows the reeds? He’ll be able to say…You can phone the police and just tell them the truth and that’ll be the end…”

“It’s easier like this.”

“How on earth can it be easier to ask Cliff to lie? Because if he lies and if they find out that he lied…?”

Now she did look frightened, but frightened was something that he could deal with. Frightened was something he understood. He approached her the way he approached the ponies in the paddock, one hand out and the other visible: No surprises here, Gina, nothing to fear.

He said, “Can you trust me on this? Do you trust me?”

“Of course I trust you. Why shouldn’t I trust you? But I don’t understand…”

He touched her bare shoulder. “You’re here with me. You’ve been with me…what? A month? Longer? Are you thinking I would’ve hurt Jemima? Gone up to London? Found her wherever she was and stabbed her to death? Is that how I seem to you? That sort of bloke? He goes to London, murders a woman for no real reason since she’s already long gone out of his life, then comes home and makes love to this woman, this woman right here, the centre of his whole flaming world? Why? Why?”

“Let me look at your eyes.” She reached up and took off his dark glasses, which he hadn’t removed on coming into the barn. She set them on the brushing table and then she put her hand on his cheek. He met her gaze. She looked at him and he didn’t flinch and finally her expression softened. She kissed his cheek and then his closed eyelids. Then she kissed his mouth. Then her own mouth opened, and her hands went down to his arse and she pulled him close.

After a moment, breathless, she said, “Take me right here,” and he did so.

THEY FOUND ROBBIE Hastings between Vinney Ridge and Anderwood, which were two stopping-off spots on the Lyndhurst Road between Burley and the A35. They had reached him on his mobile, from a number that Gordon Jossie had given them. “He’ll doubtless tell you the worst about me,” Jossie said abruptly.

It was no easy matter to locate Jemima Hastings’ brother since so many roads in the New Forest had convenient names but no signs. They finally discovered exactly where he was by chance, having stopped at a cottage where the road they were taking made a dogleg, only to discover it was called Anderwood Cottage. By heading farther along the route, they were led to believe by the cottage owner, they would locate Rob Hastings on a track leading to Dames Slough Inclosure. He was an agister, they were told, and he’d been called to do “the usual bit of sad business.”

This business turned out to be the shooting of one of the New Forest ponies that had been hit by a car on A35. The poor animal had apparently managed to stagger across acres of heath before collapsing. When Barbara and Nkata found the agister, he’d put the horse to death with one merciful shot from a.32 pistol, and he’d brought the animal’s body to the edge of the lane. He was talking on his mobile, and sitting attentively next to him was a majestic-looking Weimaraner, so well trained as to ignore not only the interlopers but also the dead pony lying a short distance from the Land Rover in which Robbie Hastings had apparently come to this lonely spot.

Nkata pulled off the lane as far as he was able. Hastings nodded as they approached him. They’d told him only that they wanted to speak with him at once, and he looked grave. It was hardly likely that he had many calls from the Metropolitan police in this part of the world.

He said, “Stay, Frank,” to the dog and came towards them. “You might want to keep back from the pony. It’s not a happy sight.” He said he was waiting for the New Forest Hounds and then added, “Ah. Here he is,” in reference to an open-bed lorry that rumbled towards them. It was pulling a low trailer with shallow sides, and into this the dead animal was going to be loaded. It would be used for meat to feed the dogs, Robbie Hastings informed them as the lorry got into position. At least some good would come of the reckless stupidity of drivers who thought the Perambulation was their personal playground, he added.

Barbara and Nkata had already decided there was no way that they were going to inform Robbie Hastings of his sister’s death on the side of a country road. But they had also reckoned that their very presence was likely to set the man on edge, and it did so. Once the pony was loaded and the lorry from New Forest Hounds had negotiated a difficult turn to get back to the main road, Hastings swung round to them and said, “What’s happened? It’s bad. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

Barbara said, “Is there somewhere we could have a conversation with you, Mr. Hastings?”

Hastings touched the top of his dog’s smooth head. “Might tell me here,” he said. “There’s no place nearby for private talk ’less you want to go into Burley, and you don’t want that, not at this time of year.”

“Do you live nearby?”

“Beyond Burley.” He took off the baseball cap he was wearing, revealing a head of close-cropped hair. This was graying and would have been thick otherwise, and he used a kerchief he had round his neck to scrub over his face. His face was singularly unattractive, with large buckteeth and virtually no chin. His eyes, however, were deeply human and they filled with tears as he looked at them. He said, “So she’s dead, eh?” and when Barbara’s expression told him this was so, he gave a terrible cry and turned from them.

Barbara exchanged a look with Nkata. Neither of them moved at first. Then Nkata was the one to put his hand on Hastings’ shoulder and the one to say, “We’re that sorry, mon. ’S bad when someone goes like this.”

He himself was upset. Barbara knew this from the way Nkata’s accent altered, becoming less South London and more Caribbean, with the th’s morphing into d’s. He said, “I’m drivin’ you home. Sergeant here, she follow in my car. You tell me how to go, we get you there. No way you need to be out here now. You good to tell me how to get t’your place?”

“I can drive,” Hastings said.

“No way you’re doing that, mon.” Nkata jerked his head at Barbara and she hastened to open the Land Rover’s passenger door. On its seat were a shotgun and the pistol the man had used to shoot the pony. She moved these beneath the seat and together she and Nkata got Hastings inside. His dog followed: one graceful leap and Frank was leaning against his master in the silent way all dogs have of comforting.

They made a sad little procession out of the area, proceeding not back the way they had come but rather farther along the lane through a woodland of oaks and chestnuts. These afforded a canopy that arced over the lane in a verdant tunnel of leaves. Back out on the Lyndhurst Road, though, there was broad lawn on one side giving way to tangled heath on the other. Herds of ponies grazed freely here, and where they wished to cross the road, they simply did so.

Once in Burley, it became quickly clear why Hastings had said they would not want to have a private conversation there. Tourists were massing everywhere, and they seemed to be taking their cues from the ponies and the cows wandering through the village at will: They walked where their fancy took them, bright sunlight falling upon their shoulders.

Hastings lived through and beyond the village. He had a holding at the top of a strip of road called Honey Lane-actually marked with a sign, Barbara noted-and when they finally pulled onto the property, she saw it was similar to a farm, with several outbuildings and paddocks, one of which held two horses.