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

He tried again. ‘We matched the body to your description of Owen on the National Crime Agency missing persons database. The photo, his Gaia tattoo. I’m afraid it does look as though it’s him. That’s why I need your help.’

Her head shook from side to side. ‘No. You’re wrong. Lots of people have Gaia tattoos nowadays. Because of the climate crisis. Owen was so committed to the planet, he . . .’

Ford waited. She’d just used the past tense to describe her husband. The ancient, emotional part of her brain might be in full-blown denial, but the rational part knew.

It always did. It started adjusting language, planning funerals, wondering where the loved one kept all their internet passwords. Figuring out the best way to explain it to Sam.

He listened to the sound of her breathing. A cat wandered into the room and performed figures of eight around her ankles. Outside, a raspy engine noise disturbed the quiet street. He looked out of the window and saw the Ferrari pulling away.

‘How?’ she asked, in a quiet voice.

‘The man we found had been shot.’

‘Shot,’ she repeated. She frowned. ‘You mean with a gun?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

Ruth nodded. Moving slowly, her back straight, as if balancing books on her head, she stood up and left the room, telling Ford she needed to collect a few things.

Ford stood and inspected the photographs grouped on the mantelpiece. In one, Ruth stood beside a teenage girl. The girl wore a tutu and ballet pumps. Ruth wore a black wraparound cardigan and leggings. In her right hand she held a cane of some sort. A dance teacher? That would account for her posture and graceful gait.

He heard the door swing open again. He turned. Ruth stood there, a small brown leather holdall in her hand. She smiled at the photo.

‘Chloe Roberts. My best pupil last year. She’s headed for the Royal Ballet.’

‘You teach?’

‘I used to dance professionally. That’s me at the end.’ Ford followed her gaze and saw a younger version of the grief-stricken woman before him, onstage. In a pale pink tutu, her over-made-up face bearing a wide, strained smile, she hung in mid-air, a muscular male dancer beneath her, arms outstretched, ready to catch her.

Before leaving for Salisbury, Ford excused himself and phoned George. He apologised for calling her into work and asked her to have the body moved to the viewing room. He didn’t anticipate any violence this time.

On the drive down, he asked Ruth about Owen. She explained he’d been a vicar in the Church of England for thirty-two years before deciding the planet needed him more than God did.

She told Ford that Owen had been planning some sort of solo protest, but beyond that she didn’t know anything. He’d taken their car, a silver Toyota Prius, which meant Ford could set someone looking for it on CCTV.

He arrived with Ruth at the Chapel of Rest at 2.57 p.m. First he showed her photographs, just in case she gave an instant ‘no, that’s not him’. No sense in distressing the public with corpses if he didn’t have to. But she nodded, tearfully.

Now, Ford stood beside a visibly shaking Ruth as Pete gently drew back the sheet from her husband’s face. They’d done a beautiful job of restoring Owen to an approximation of normality.

Somehow, Pete and his colleagues had reduced the swelling of his facial tissues. He wore the usual peaceful expression in death that grieving families take as a sign their loved one hasn’t suffered, not knowing it’s simply the consequence of the muscles relaxing.

Pete had hidden the bullet hole under Owen’s chin beneath a sheet. It wrapped around his neck and extended up and over his head, to cover the sutures from the incision across his forehead.

Ruth stood, looking down at her dead husband. She extended a trembling finger and stroked it down his cheek.

‘Is it Owen, Mrs Long?’ Ford asked.

She sniffed. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

Ford led her away and nodded his thanks to Pete, who solemnly replaced the sheet over Owen Long’s face.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Ford asked Ruth as they reached the hospital’s ground floor. ‘They have a nice cafe here.’

‘Yes, please.’

With cups in front of them, Ford explained that they would need to ask her questions, but that he could assign her an FLO to travel back to London with her.

She shook her head. ‘I’ll find a B&B here for a few days. I want to be close to him.’

‘We’ll sort that out for you. There are some nice ones in the city centre. You’ll need some things. Would you like me to have someone fetch them from home for you? One of my sergeants, Jan Derwent, could do it. I’ll introduce you at the police station so you can tell her what to bring.’

Ruth nodded. ‘Thank you.’

Their teas finished, he drove Ruth to Bourne Hill.

He called Jan. ‘Can you come to Interview Suite Three, Jan? I have Ruth Long here with me.’

Jan came in and sat beside Ruth on the two-person sofa. Ford saw the way Ruth reacted to the presence of another woman. Some of the tension left her shoulders.

Jan gave off a vibe that made people relax around her – a tool she used to devastating effect when interviewing cocky young thugs who thought they were being interviewed by their aunt, right up to the point where she allowed them, gently, to incriminate themselves. Here, it produced a calming effect.

‘I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs Long,’ she said.

‘Please, call me Ruth.’

‘Ruth, I want you to know we’re all working as hard as we can to find the person who killed Owen. Now,’ she said, opening her notebook, ‘what can I bring you from home?’

Jan left after five minutes with a list of clothes and personal items.

Ford turned to Ruth. ‘I’ll get someone to walk back to your B&B with you. While Jan is collecting your things, it would be helpful if she could look around. We’d also like to collect Owen’s toothbrush for a DNA sample. Would