than the other. Good, firm thighs, I expect. Strong as well. Other one was littler, wasn't she."
"What d'you want?" he'd asked. "Because I've work to do and so does Gina and you're blocking the driveway."
"That does make it a bit rough, doesn't it? Me blocking the driveway. Where'd the other go?"
"What other?"
"You know what I mean, lad. The grapevine tells me someone's got their knickers twisted up over you. Where's the other? Make the leap here with me, Gordon. I know you can."
He'd had no choice but to tell him: Jemima, leaving the New Forest without her car for God knows what reason, leaving most of her belongings as well, because if he didn't tell that he knew damn well it would come out anyway and there'd be hell to pay.
"Just took herself off, you say?" he'd asked.
"That's what happened."
"Why? You not doing the job on her proper, Gordon? Fine, strapping man like you, man with all the right parts in all the right places?"
"I don't know why she left."
The other examined him. He took off his glasses and polished them on a special cloth he removed from his pocket. "Don't give me that one," he said and his tone of voice was no longer the spuriously jovial one he'd used before but was now rather icy the way a blade is icy if someone presses it against hot skin. "Don't you be playing me for a fool. I don't like hearing your name come up in general conversation. Makes me feel dead uneasy, it does. So you still want to say she just left you and you don't know why? I'll not have that."
Gordon's worry had been that Gina would come into the barn, that she would want to know or to help, to intercede or to protect, for that was her nature.
"She said she couldn't cope," Gordon said. "All right? She said she couldn't cope."
"With what?" And then he'd smiled slowly. No humour in it, but there wouldn't have been. "Cope with what, my love?" he'd repeated.
"You bloody well know," said between his teeth.
"Ah ...Now don't get cheeky with me, lad. Cheekiness? It doesn't become you."
Chapter Nine
THE STOKE NEWINGTON HOUSE-TO-HOUSE TURNED UP nothing, as did the perimeter search of the environs of the chapel and gridding off the whole blooming cemetery and conducting a search that way. They had enough manpower to carry it all off - both from the local station and from officers on loan from other areas - but the end result was no witness, no weapon, no handbag, no shoulder bag, no purse, and no identification. Just an admirable rubbish cleanup of the cemetery. On the other hand, they'd had phone calls aplenty, and a description shuffled to SO5 had actually produced a possible lead. In this, they were assisted by the fact that the body in question had unusual eyes: one green and one brown. Once they plugged that into the computer, the field of missing persons narrowed down to one.
She'd been reported as having disappeared from her lodgings in Putney, and it was to Putney that Barbara Havers was sent two days after the discovery of the body; specifically she was sent to Oxford Road, which was equidistant from Putney High Street and Wandsworth Park.
There she parked illegally in a residents-only space, propped a police ID in plain sight, and rang the bell on a terrace house whose front garden appeared to be the street's recycling centre, if the bins and plastic containers were anything to go by. She was admitted to the house by an older woman with a military haircut and a bit of a military moustache. She wore exercise clothing and pristine white trainers done up with pink and purple laces. She said that she was Bella McHaggis and it was bloody well time a cop'd shown up and was this sort of incompetence what her taxes paid for and the bloody government can't do a thing right, can they, because just look at the condition of the streets, not to mention the Underground, and she'd phoned the cops two days ago, and ...
Blah, blah, blah, Barbara thought. While Bella McHaggis gave vent to her feelings, she herself had a look round the place: uncarpeted wood floor, hall stand with umbrellas and coats, and on the wall a framed document announcing itself as HOUSE RULES FOR OCCUPANTS, with a sign saying LANDLADY ON PREMISES posted beneath it. "With lodgers, one can't bang on about the rules enough," Bella