buildings. He's working on people's houses, Jossie is. He sees what's inside them, and some of them will have valuables. This isn't exactly a poverty-stricken part of the country, sir."
"Burglaries orchestrated by Jossie and discovered by Whiting? Pocketing ill-gotten gains instead of making an arrest?"
"Or could be they're into something together."
"Something that Jemima Hastings discovered?"
"That's definitely a possibility. So I'm wondering ...Could you do some checking on him? Bit of snooping. Background and such. Who is this bloke Zachary Whiting? Where'd he do his police training? Where'd he come from before he ended up here?"
"I'll see what I can sort out," Lynley said.
WHILE ALL ROADS weren't exactly leading to Gordon Jossie, Barbara thought, they were certainly circling the bloke. It was time to see what the rest of the team in London had come up with when checking on him - not to mention when checking on every other name she'd handed over - so after breakfast when she and Winston were making their preparations for the day, she took out her mobile to make the call.
It rang before she had a chance. The caller was Isabelle Ardery. Her remarks were brief, of the pack-up-and-come-home variety. They had a solid suspect, they had what was undoubtedly the murder weapon; they had his shoes and his clothing, which were going to test positive for Jemima's blood; they had an established connection between them.
"And he's a nutter," Ardery concluded. "Schizophrenic who won't take meds."
"He can't be tried, then," Barbara said.
"Trying him's hardly the point, Sergeant," Ardery told her. "Getting him permanently off the street is."
"Understood. But there's more than one curious person down this way, guv," Barbara told her. "I mean, just considering Jossie, f'r instance, you might want us to stay and nose round till we - "
"What I want is your return to London."
"C'n I ask where we are with the background checks?"
"So far there's nothing questionable on anyone," Ardery told her. "Especially not down there. Your holiday's over. Get back to London. Today."
"Right." Barbara ended the call and made a face at the phone. She knew an order when she heard an order. She wasn't convinced, however, that the order made sense.
"So?" Winston said to her.
"That's definitely the question of the hour."
Chapter Nineteen
ALTHOUGH BELLA MCHAGGIS LIKED TO THINK THAT HER lodgers would scrupulously do their own recycling, she'd learned over time that they were far more likely to toss items into the rubbish. So weekly, she made rounds inside her house. She found broadsheets and tabloids piled here and there, old magazines under beds, Coke cans crushed inside wastepaper baskets, and all sorts of otherwise valuable articles in nearly every location.
It was for this reason that she emerged from her house with a laundry basket whose contents she intended to deposit among the many receptacles she had long ago placed in her front garden for this purpose. On the step, however, basket in arms, Bella halted abruptly. For after their previous encounter, the last person she expected to see just inside her front gate was Yolanda the Pyschic. She was in the midst of waving in the air what looked like a large green cigar. A plume of smoke rose from it, and as she waved it, Yolanda chanted sonorously in her husky masculine tone.
This was the bloody limit, Bella thought. She dropped her basket and yelped, "You! What the bloody hell will it take? Get off my property this instant."
Yolanda's eyes had been shut, but they flew open. She appeared to shake off some trance she was in. That was likely another one of her completely spurious performances, Bella thought.
The woman was an utter charlatan.
Bella kicked the laundry basket to one side and strode over to the psychic, who was holding her ground. "Did you hear me?" she demanded. "Leave the property this instant or I'll have you arrested. And stop waving that ...that thing in my face."
Closer to it now, Bella saw that that thing was a collection of pale leaves, rolled tightly and bound up with thin twine. Its smoke was, frankly, not bad smelling, more like incense than tobacco. But that was hardly the point.
"Black as the night," was Yolanda's reply. Her eyes looked odd, and Bella wondered if the woman was high on drugs. "Black as the night and the sun, the sun." Yolanda waved her stick of smoking whatever-it-was directly in Bella's face. "Ooze from the windows. Ooze from the doors. Purity is needed or the evil within - "