been built upon it. So the place blended cob, half-timber, and brick, and its roof was part thatch and another part slate tiles.
Gordon had removed the old thatch right down to the rafters. When Meredith arrived he was in the midst of climbing down from the scaffolding where, beneath the pub's eponymous oak, his apprentice was organising bundles of reeds. Cammie was happy to play upon a swing at the far side of the pub's beer garden, so Meredith knew she'd be well occupied while her mum had a chat with the master thatcher.
Gordon didn't look surprised to see her. Meredith reckoned Gina Dickens had likely reported her visit, and who could blame her? She wondered if, after making her report, Gina had also grilled Gordon on the matter of a car that was not his and on the matter of clothing stored in his attic. She thought the younger woman might have done. She'd seemed unnerved enough when Meredith had brought her more fully into the picture of the place Jemima Hastings had occupied in Gordon Jossie's life.
Meredith wasted no time with preambles once she saw Cammie climb safely onto the swing. She strode up to Gordon Jossie and she said, "What I'd like to know is how she was supposed to get up to London without her car, Gordon," and she waited to hear how he'd answer the question and what his face would look like as he did so.
Gordon glanced at his apprentice. He said, "Let's have a break, Cliff," and added nothing more till the younger man had nodded and disappeared into the pub. Then he removed the baseball cap he'd been wearing and wiped down his face and his balding pate with a handkerchief that he removed from his jeans. He had his sunglasses on and he didn't remove them, which, Meredith knew, was going to make it more difficult to read him. She'd always thought he wore dark glasses so often because he didn't want people to see his shifty eyes, but Jemima had said, "Oh, that's nonsense," and apparently thought there was nothing odd about a man in dark glasses rain or shine, sometimes even indoors as well. But that had been the problem from the first: Meredith had thought there were scores of things about Gordon Jossie that just weren't right, while Jemima had wanted to see none of them. He was, after all, m-a-n, one of a subspecies among whom Jemima had been careening for years like someone controlled by the Pinball Wizard.
Now Gordon removed those dark glasses, but he kept them off only long enough to wipe them down with his handkerchief, whereupon he replaced them, shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket, and said calmly, "What d'you have against me, Meredith?"
"The fact that you separated Jemima from her friends."
He nodded slowly, as if taking this in. He finally said, "From you, you mean."
"From everyone, Gordon. You don't deny it, do you?"
"No point to denying what's dead wrong, eh? Stupid as well, if you don't mind me saying. You stopped coming round, didn't you, so if any separating was being done, you're the one who did it. D'you want to talk about why?"
"What I want to talk about is why her car's in your barn. I want to know why you told that ...that ...that blonde at your house that the car belongs to you. I also want to know why her clothes're packed up and nothing even vaguely Jemima is on display anywhere."
"Why am I supposed to tell you all that?"
"Because if you don't or if you do and I'm not satisfied with what you tell me ..." She let the threat hang there. He wasn't a fool. He knew what the rest of the sentence would be.
Still he said, "What?" He was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and from its breast pocket he took a packet of cigarettes. He shook one out and lit it with a plastic lighter. And then he waited for her reply. He turned his head briefly to look beyond her where, across the street from the pub, a redbrick farmhouse stood at the edge of the heath. The heath itself rolled into the distance, purple with heather. A wood lay beyond it. The treetops seemed to shimmer in the summer heat.
"Oh, just answer me," Meredith said. "Where is she and why'd she not take her car?"
His head turned towards her once again. "What was she to do with a car up in London?
She didn't