well? Perhaps you want me dead? I mean, we were something to each other for a while, weren't we?"
She was silent at this. The day around them was bright and hot and clear, and the sounds of the birds intensified suddenly. She finally said, "I don't want you dead. I don't even want you harmed, Gordon. I just want to forget about it. About us. I want a new life. We're going to emigrate and open a business and to do that ...And it's your own fault. If you hadn't put up those cards. If you hadn't. I was in a state, and he wanted to know, so I told him. He asked - well, anyone would - how I'd come to find out because he reckoned it'd be the last thing you'd tell anyone. So I told him that part as well."
"About the paddock."
"Not the paddock itself but what you'd found there. How I expected we'd use it or sell it or whatever one does, how you hadn't wanted to, and then ...well, yes. Why. I had to tell him why."
"Had to?"
"Of course. Don't you see? There aren't supposed to be secrets between people who love each other."
"And he loves you."
"He does."
Yet Gordon could see her doubts, and he understood how the existence of her doubts had also served a role in what was happening. She wanted to secure him, whoever he was. He wanted money. These desires combined to produce betrayal.
"When?" he asked her.
"What?"
"When did you decide to do this, Jemima?"
"I'm not doing anything. You asked to see me. I didn't ask to see you. You looked for me, I didn't look for you. If you hadn't done any of that, there'd have been no need to tell anyone about you."
"And when money had come up between you? What then?"
"It never did come up, till I told him why ..." Her voice drifted off at that point, and he could tell that she was reasoning something out on her own, determining the possibility of something that he himself was only too able to see.
He said, "It's the money. He wants the money. Not you. You see that, don't you?"
She said, "No. That's not the truth."
He said, "And I expect you've had your doubts all along."
"He loves me."
"If that's how you see it."
"You're a rotten person."
"I suppose I am."
He'd said that he would cooperate with her plan to return to the holding and stake her claim. He would be gone, but it would take time to effect the sort of disappearance that was required. She asked how long and he said he wasn't sure. He would have to speak to certain people and then he would let her know. She could, naturally, ring up the media in the meantime and make some additional cash that way. He said this last bitterly before he'd walked off. What a mess he'd made of everything, he thought.
And now Gina. Or whoever the hell she was. He told himself that if he hadn't decided to replace the bloody fence of the bloody paddock, none of this would have happened. But the truth of the matter was that the first event that had brought him ultimately to this moment had occurred in a crowded McDonald's when let's jus' take him had led to let's make him cry had led to s hut him up! how do we shut him up?
When Zachary Whiting showed up at the Royal Oak pub a few hours after his arrival at the work site, Gordon was up on the roof's ridge. He saw the familiar vehicle pull into the car park, but he felt neither nervous nor afraid. He'd prepared himself for Whiting's eventual appearance. Since they'd been interrupted during their last encounter, Gordon knew the chief superintendent was probably unwilling to let that moment between them go uncompleted.
The cop signaled him down from the roof. Cliff was handing a bundle of straw up to him, so Gordon told him to take a break. The day was as hot as every day that had preceded it, so he said, "Have a cider," and he said the cider would be on him. "Enjoy," he told him. "I'll be along directly."
Cliff was happy to comply although he muttered, "Anything wrong, mate?" as Whiting approached. He likely didn't know who Whiting was, but he could sense the man's menace.
Whiting wore it like skin.
"Not a bit," was Gordon's reply. "Take your time in there," he added, with a nod to the doorway. And