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

of gloved search officers were standing in front of a six-foot-wide grey-painted steel cabinet. One by one they were removing long guns and laying them on a long wooden trestle table.

The guns varied in size and appointments. Some had ornate engraving on their metal parts, and gleaming, richly figured wood. Others were more serviceable-looking weapons, with stocks of camouflage-painted plastic or plain wood.

One of the larger rifles had a telescopic sight. Was he looking at the rifle used to murder Tommy Bolter? He peered at it but couldn’t see a manufacturer’s stamp. One for Hannah. The ballistics tests might take a while, but she’d still be able to start processing it for forensics.

He left them to it and went to find Jan. She was outside the front door with an aerial photo of Alverchalke Manor spread out on the bonnet of a marked car.

‘Hi, guv,’ she said. ‘All right?’

‘It’s going well. Your team in the workshop are bagging up all the weapons from the gun cabinet.’

‘Yeah, what if there are more? Hidden, maybe? They’re supposed to keep them secure, but on a spread this size, who knows?’

‘You’ll find them, Jan,’ he said with a smile. ‘I have to go. I suggest you clear one wing of the house, then confine the family and staff there. According to the plans we looked at earlier, the east wing is accessible via a single corridor.’

She nodded. ‘We’ll clear it, get them down there, then station a single uniform at the end. I’ll put a team at each corner of the house when we leave. Maybe a dog-handler on roving patrol?’

‘Yes. Good idea.’

Ford’s phone pinged twice as he pulled up outside his home that evening. Two texts from Sam:

Staying with Josh for tea

And sleepover

Smiling, he let himself in, made a cup of coffee and took it upstairs to his music room. He sipped the coffee, and while he waited for the amp to warm up he thought about Joe Hibberd.

Everyone was focused on Joe, and rightly so, because Ford had directed them to. But Ford was now looking beyond the arrest.

What if Joe hadn’t fired the fatal shot that killed Owen? Or what if he had, but then enlisted someone else to help him murder Tommy? He’d served under Lord Baverstock. Wouldn’t he be the natural one to ask if Joe had found himself in trouble?

Ford shook his head. Would someone in Lord Baverstock’s position really engage in a conspiracy to murder just to save his gamekeeper’s skin?

If not to save Joe, how about to save someone else? That would point the finger at either his wife or his children. He shook his head. Bumble, Coco, Loopy and Stodge. They sounded like the cast of one of the screechy TV shows he and Lou had sat watching with a very young Sam.

Lord Baverstock had said ten to fifteen people knew where to find the key to the gun safe, including Joe. So it could just as easily have been another member of staff Joe had gone to. If Hibberd wouldn’t talk, Ford would start profiling all the estate workers. And he would look first for any who’d served with either Joe or Lord Baverstock in the army.

But it wasn’t just the Martival family occupying his thoughts. He also had the Bolters to contend with.

Ford saw, clearer than before, what would happen if the Bolters decided to act on the information they’d gleaned about him investigating the Martivals. He pictured a tooled-up gang of black-clad hard men, JJ and Rye at their head, storming Alverchalke Manor blaring defiance and demanding justice. Heard the rattle of small arms as Lord Baverstock and his family returned fire using a cache of unlicensed weapons.

Martin Petersen would shit himself at the damage that would do to ‘the brand’. The image made Ford smile, despite the pressure, and he picked up his guitar. Now he’d externalised his thoughts, he felt ready to play. The music flowed. He turned the volume up.

Hannah pulled her chair closer to her iMac in her softly lit home office. She opened the document she’d been working on every night for several weeks:

Eleven Reasons Why ‘Henry’ Ford Should Stop Blaming Himself For Louisa Ford’s Death

She’d felt bad, lying to Ford in the cafe. But then, it wasn’t really lying, because the document he’d seen on her PC was for Sam. It was just that she had another one at home that did focus on Lou’s death. If he’d asked her the right question, she would have had to tell him the truth. And that would have been a disaster. But he hadn’t. So it was fine. For now.

The research had been easy. She’d been hoping for more of a challenge, but the case had made quite a splash in the Welsh papers, and even one or two of the nationals had picked it up briefly. And the Salisbury Journal, of course, but it had concentrated more on the human angle.

The prize for her had been a feature in a climbing magazine. It had analysed the risks and rewards of climbing ten sea crags around the British coast, including Pen-y-Holt. Where there had been fatalities, it had examined them and offered dispassionate analysis on how, or if, they could have been avoided.

‘Yes, Uta Frith,’ she said, stroking the cat, who had jumped up on to her lap and was purring loudly. ‘That is watertight. When the time is right, and I show Henry, he’ll see I’m correct.’

Then she frowned. But would he? Or would he give her one of those searching looks she’d seen him bestow on subjects in the horrid-smelling Interview Suite Four? The look that said, to her, You think you’re so clever, but there are realms of understanding in which I roam freely and into which you are simply unequipped to enter.

The doorbell rang. She frowned. Nobody rang her doorbell at night unless she had invited them. And she hadn’t invited anyone this evening. She never