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

‘Cheeky.’

Sam shrugged. ‘Yeah, yeah.’

He slumped into an armchair and began tying and untying a series of increasingly complex knots. Ford watched, telling himself, It will be fine. He’ll be fine. Don’t worry about Sam. Focus on the case. Leave the trip till it’s here.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

At 8.00 a.m. the next day, Ford called the Met’s control room and introduced himself.

‘We need to do a hard stop on a suspect. He’ll be leaving Mayfair today. Can you get your traffic guys to put his index number on to ANPR and call me when he pops up?’

Then he called a police staff investigator who he knew had a fast motorbike. He sent her up to London to wait outside Bigwood’s and watch for Lord Baverstock.

He also popped down to see Natalie Hewitt in R&P and told her she could pull Mark off his protection duties with Sam.

Ford looked at the pile of paperwork on his desk, and decided it could wait. He’d reread about half the documents and hadn’t found anything he could take to Sandy that pointed to Lucy Martival.

There might be nothing concrete, but worrying at it overnight he’d become even more confident that she’d played a role – how big, he didn’t know yet – in one or both of the men’s deaths. Because if the gossips – and his gut – had it right, then Tommy absolutely ‘knew’ Owen’s killer.

Gossip! He rang Connor Dowdell.

‘When Tommy told you he was having sex with Lucy Martival, did he give you any details?’

Dowdell’s voice took on an incredulous tone. ‘What? Like positions and that?’

‘More like anything personal about Lucy.’ Ford thought back to the Martival family’s fondness for silly nicknames. ‘For example, did he have a pet name for her?’

The line went silent except for the noise of Dowdell breathing. ‘Yeah. Yeah! He told me she wanted him to call her Loopy. Don’t know why, though. Makes her sound like she’s got a screw loose.’

And there it was. More proof that she’d been lying. How would Tommy Bolter know about Lucy’s nickname unless they’d met?

Ford wanted to act. He needed to. JJ and Rye Bolter were circling Alverchalke, pack dogs closing in on a kill. Who knew who might get caught in the crossfire between these two murderous families? And he could feel the pressure from Sandy and every level above her, right up to the chief con. That was before the PPC, the press and all the many people on social media chipped in. All of whom felt they knew more about solving murders than someone as lowly as a mere DI.

He needed a break. The slow grind of police work had drawn him closer to the murderer, but he still hadn’t located the killer clue that would smash the case open and allow him to penetrate its secrets.

Using the stairs to avoid meeting anyone who’d thrust even more paper into his hands, he reached the car park unseen. Ten minutes later he climbed out of the Discovery at Old Sarum, the Iron Age hill fort that had been the original site of the city.

Walking anticlockwise on the inner rampart, he let his thoughts drift. The sun warmed his back. The leaves of the beeches towering over him shifted in the breeze, adding a soft rattle to the sound of the wind through the higher branches. To his right, on a gently sloping field, a tractor trundled left to right, spraying the vivid green crop with a whitish haze of insecticide.

A small dog ran up to him and barked, twice, before being called back by its owner.

‘Sorry,’ she called.

Ford waved her apology away. ‘No problem.’ Except for the bloody big one occupying my every waking hour: the Lucy Problem.

He called the two victims to mind. Come for a walk with me. He placed Tommy on his left, Owen on his right. Walked with them companionably. They were both murdered on a landscape just like the one surrounding Old Sarum. Owen while trying to protect it; Tommy while trying to make a bit of money from it.

Neither man should have been there. But neither deserved to die at the hands of the people who owned it.

‘If you had his Cloud footage, you’d see what I saw,’ Tommy’s voice intoned from somewhere inside Ford’s head. Yes, but I haven’t, have I? That’s the point. Because Owen was too bloody cautious with his password. And GoPro’s lawyers make the CPS look like bloody ambulance-chasers.

Mentally, he turned to Owen. The former vicar smiled at him, water dripping from his hairline. ‘What do you know about me, Inspector?’

Ford stopped. The two men faded. Because he’d had an idea. Owen’s main PC password was complex, but it was anything but random. It said ‘Gaia needs Owen’, didn’t it? So he used memorable phrases as clues to help him remember his password. Gaia represented what Ford thought of as ‘new’ Owen: the eco-warrior. But before that, he’d been a vicar. And Ruth, bless her, had given him a clue on the day he’d travelled up to Islington to deliver the death knock.

He cast his mind back to their conversation at Bourne Hill. What had she said about Owen’s favourite book of the Bible? It related to the title of his blog.

The Circle of the Earth. It’s a quote from . . . Dammit! The memory wouldn’t hold still long enough for him to grab the next word. What was it? Jeremiah? Isaac?

He pulled out his phone. He tapped in the quote and then saw to his dismay that, despite his elevation above the city – with the spire, as always, visible in the centre – he had no signal.

‘Shit!’ he yelled, startling a couple of tourists, before turning and running back to the car park, narrowly avoiding tripping over a little dog gambolling in the lush grass.

Back at Bourne Hill he rushed up to Forensics, taking the stairs two at a time. He saw no sign of Hannah. He asked the nearest