Land Rites (Detective Ford) by Andy Maslen (best ereader for manga TXT) 📕

As he read on, he learned why the body had sunk: the murderer had stabbed the vital organs, post-mortem. Eight accurately placed blows, neither random nor frenzied. And since suicides tended not to stab themselves after death, George – and Ford was in agreement – concluded it was a homicide. The only other pre-mortem injury was a dog bite, from a medium to large animal, on the left buttock. The corpse bore a single tattoo: a naked green woman sitting cross-legged, cradling planet Earth in front of her breasts. George had also found two dental implants. Expensive stuff at around three grand a pop.

He finished reading and sat back. The dog bite was interesting. For one thing, Hibberd’s dogs were collies, a medium breed. And what about the calibre? When he’d interviewed Joe Hibberd, he’d been shooting with a .22. Ford closed his eyes. He was already convinced by the circumstances that the two murders were linked. But why were they linked? What was the thread binding them together?

He had a local wannabe crime lord, into poaching and petty crime, and an older man with expensive dentistry that screamed middle-class. Similarities first. Tommy Bolter and the second victim, who Ford had mentally dubbed Pond Man, were both male. Both white. Both tattooed.

He opened the attachment and paged through until he found the image of the tattoo. The woman was indeed naked, but she wasn’t sexy. If anything, she looked maternal, wrapping the planet protectively in her arms. He had a feeling it was something to do with the eco movement, and had a look online. Within seconds he’d found a page of similar images. And an explanation.

She was ‘Gaia’. The personification of an idea that the whole planet was connected in a giant system of mutual respect and benefit.

Was the fact that both men had tattoos significant? Everybody had them these days. Ford had put his foot down when Sam had asked to get one, pointing out, among other things, that it was illegal. But while Sam was sixteen and Tommy, comparatively speaking, not that much older, Pond Man was around seventy.

Old soldiers like Dan had plenty of tats. So did sailors and labourers, but those tended towards the traditional: hearts with daggers through them; the names of sweethearts on banners surmounted by bluebirds. Ford couldn’t see a salty old sea dog sporting a Gaia tattoo. He parked the idea.

Both men had been killed by gunshots to the head. Both dumped a couple of miles apart on farmland leased out or adjacent to that owned by Lord Baverstock.

How about the differences? The most significant concerned the shootings themselves. Tommy had been shot at a distance, Pond Man close up. Different calibres, too. That might mean two separate shooters. He’d come back to that.

More differences piled up. One old, one young. One dismembered, one not, although Pond Man had received numerous deep stab wounds. Different dump sites: earth and water. Enough differences to rule out a serial killer? He wasn’t sure. Certainly, any signature was well hidden.

He returned to Pond Man’s tattoo. If he was local, canvassing the city’s tattoo parlours might throw up an artist who remembered inking the older guy’s skin. Ford knew of half a dozen places in the city, but before putting a couple of uniforms on it, he decided to visit the oldest and biggest himself. He printed out the image and headed out.

Ten minutes later, he was showing Pond Man’s tattoo to a bearded guy with full sleeves of tattoos on both arms. Ford turned the photo around on the glass counter, below which studs, hoops, spikes and chains were displayed like fine jewellery, alongside colour photos demonstrating the myriad locations on the human body where they could be inserted.

‘It’s nice, but it’s not one of our artists’ work,’ the guy said, scratching his beard.

‘You’re sure?’

He nodded. ‘I know to you one piece looks much like another, but there’s a ton of difference in how two different artists work. Line, shading, depth, palette. People don’t really understand how much technique goes into something like that.’

Ford sighed. ‘What about that design in general? Who typically gets one like that?’

‘Now, that I can tell you,’ he said. He tapped the woman. ‘She’s Gaia, yeah? Mother Earth. Very popular with the eco brigade. We get a lot of young girls who want her.’

‘Can you tell how recent it is?’

‘Good question. Anyone would think you were a copper. Tattoos change, OK? All of them. Lines spread, colours fade. That’s quite recent. I’d say in the last three to five years.’

Ford thanked him and walked back to Bourne Hill. George had put Pond Man’s age at around seventy. He’d had his first and only tattoo at around sixty-five. An environmental design favoured by young women. Ford could see only two possible reasons. He was an old lech hoping to ingratiate himself with girls young enough to be his granddaughters. Creepy, but not unimaginable. Or he’d become some kind of eco-warrior in late middle age. Very possible.

He stopped outside Berret & Sartain and looked in at the array of shotguns on a wooden rack. The publicity photos all showed a similar type of person: posh-looking older men and a few younger and very attractive women. Wearing tweeds and long boots, they smiled widely, guns cradled in their arms or held up to their shoulders. Gun dogs – black Labs, mostly, plus a few spaniels – waited patiently at their feet. Medium breeds.

To a lot of environmental activists, these people were the enemy. Ready to kill anything that moved; hoarding land the Greens believed should belong to everyone. The feeling was mutual. To the shooting classes, environmentalists were urban keyboard warriors who didn’t understand the countryside.

Had Pond Man been causing trouble for Lord Baverstock? Was that why he was found close to the Alverchalke estate? Could he and Tommy have been working together somehow? It seemed unlikely, but in his years as