Land Rites (Detective Ford)

by Andy Maslen

  ‘Hello, Henry. We need to get the body out of the water without damaging it any further. Do we have police divers anywhere near?’

  Ford shook his head. ‘We use Avon and Somerset’s. They’re based in Bristol. That’s ninety minutes’ drive away.’

  ‘An extra ninety minutes won’t make an appreciable difference to decay at this point.’

  ‘I’ll make the call.’

  Ford returned to Bourne Hill, leaving the CSIs and the uniforms to establish a perimeter around the crime scene. He called the dive team sergeant in Bristol and secured a promise of ‘a couple of my guys’.

  His next appointment was at Salisbury Coroner’s Court on Endless Street. The inquest into Tommy Bolter’s death opened at 11.00 a.m. Ford rubbed his jaw. Could he avoid running into JJ? Yeah, right!

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Some coroners were fortunate enough to work in modern, purpose-built surroundings. Courtrooms bristling with IT. State-of-the-art on-site mortuaries. Air conditioning. Seat cushions.

  Salisbury was different. The courtroom was elegant in its way, with paintings of former coroners, antique furniture and a high, vaulted ceiling. However, being listed, it had no air conditioning. On this May day, it was sweltering.

  The coroner deemed it inappropriate to have open windows that might allow passers-by to eavesdrop on the proceedings. Even though any one of them could walk in and listen for free inside.

  For those attending, a slide into heat-induced drowsiness was prevented by the hard, upright benches ranged in front of the coroner’s table. From his seat at the back, Ford observed the attendees, virtually all of them wearing black.

  Several generations of the Bolter family had turned up, from white-haired grandparents to babies being bounced on laps. He could see the backs of the two surviving brothers in the front row. Tight shirt collars cinched their bull necks, tanned flesh bulging over crisp white cotton. JJ turned in his chair to survey the room. His eyes locked on to Ford’s. His lips moved. Tick. Tock.

  Ford held his gaze until JJ looked away. It was a minor victory, but Ford felt it all the same. If JJ was looking for answers today, though, Ford knew he was going to be disappointed.

  A steady murmur of strong Salisbury accents died away as the coroner and his staff entered the courtroom. A portly figure in an old-fashioned three-piece suit complete with gold watch chain slung across his belly, he looked as much of an anachronism as the room he now dominated.

  He smiled. He sat. The courtroom stilled.

  ‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said in a soft, cultured voice. ‘My name is Raymond Beaven. I am the coroner. I hereby open this inquest. It is my job to ascertain three important things, and three things only.’

  He gazed around the room, as if daring somebody to ask what this holy trinity might be. There were no takers. A baby started crying. JJ turned to the young woman on whose lap it writhed. Eyes downcast, she rose from her seat and hurried out. Silence reigned once more.

  Beaven cleared his throat. ‘It is my job to determine the identity of the deceased, the circumstances of their death, and the manner of their death. Thanks to the efforts of the police’ – he glanced at Ford and offered the most minuscule of nods – ‘the identity of the deceased is already known. Thomas William Bolter.’

  A sob echoed through the courtroom and was just as suddenly choked off.

  ‘The forensic pathologist has completed her post-mortem examination and has concluded that Mr Bolter was killed by a single gunshot wound. She concludes, and I agree, that the manner of his death was homicide,’ he pronounced. ‘At this point, no other definitive answers are available. As is usual in such cases, I hereby adjourn the inquest until such time as the police investigation is complete and a verdict is brought in the Crown Court. Thank you.’

  Beaven rose and left through a side door, followed by his assistant and the court stenographer. The hubbub that Beaven had silenced with his arrival arose at twice its previous volume.

  Ford knew the cause of the raised voices and complaining tones. Inquests were daunting affairs. Attendees would armour themselves in their best suits and dresses. They’d reinforce their already fragile nerves with nips from hip flasks or pints in the pub round the corner. They entered the court expecting answers there and then.

  Witnesses would be called. Police officers would deliver their findings. And, at the end, the coroner would announce his verdict and give everybody a measure of closure.

  To find themselves at a loose end after little more than two minutes was a bewildering experience.

  Ford followed them out on to Endless Street, where they congregated in a ragged knot that spilled off the pavement and into the road. He hung back, not wanting to intrude. He also wanted to observe. It was never too early to start looking at the family in a murder case.

  JJ and Rye Bolter were holding their own kind of court at the centre of the group. Ford couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he could guess.

  When a family like the Bolters lost one of their own, especially in the flower of youth, the word would go out that they wanted justice. He doubted they were even waiting for their own deadline before asking questions. That was to put pressure on him alone.

  He crossed the road to a grand Georgian house with a recessed front door. The bright sun threw deep shade beneath the scalloped portico and he was in virtual darkness. Ideal cover from which to see the comings and goings.

  Then he spotted someone on the edge of the group who he’d never in a million years have thought to see at the inquest into Tommy Bolter’s death. Joe Hibberd.

  Like the other people milling around at the top of Endless Street, Hibberd wore a dark suit. He kept plucking at the fabric under his arms and across his shoulders. He couldn’t keep his hands still, first shoving them into the trouser pockets, then pulling them free and adjusting the waistband. His face was red and his slicked-down hair glistened with either water, like Ford’s, or a great deal of gel.

  But it was the young woman seemingly glued to his side who interested Ford. Hibberd was in his late thirties. His companion couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Realising he’d been taken in by her sophisticated hairdo and elaborate make-up, including heavily kohled eyes, he revised his estimate down by a couple of years.

  Nothing wrong with that sort of age gap, Ford reminded himself. But they made a decidedly odd couple. Whereas Hibberd’s body language gave him away – as a countryman stuffed into a suit he probably only wore once a year – she appeared an entirely urban creature.

  Her dress, though modest, managed to suggest a great deal of her figure, which was slender and athletic. Though she was shorter than Hibberd by a head, a pair of staggeringly high heels elevated her closer to his level. She linked her arm through his and leaned closer to say something into his ear. He nodded, and they turned to leave the group.

  A shout killed the noise outside the court as effectively as the coroner’s quieter welcome had inside.

  ‘Hey! Who are you? And what are you doing with Tommy’s girlfriend? He’s not even in his coffin, you bastard!’

  JJ steamed through the crowd, a suited-and-booted Moses parting a black sea. Hibberd turned and manoeuvred his companion to one side, out of harm’s way.

  Ford tensed. He didn’t know what history existed between JJ and Hibberd, but the bad blood between the latter and Tommy was enough to ensure enmity where JJ was concerned. He didn’t want things to get out of hand, but he wanted to hear whatever JJ was going to say next.

  JJ didn’t say anything next.

  He cannoned into Hibberd, arms outstretched, meaty palms landing square on his chest. Hibberd rolled around the impact and pushed JJ, who stumbled and almost went down.

  The young woman with Hibberd screamed as JJ whirled round and lashed out with a bunched fist. It was a wild swing and Hibberd was already moving out of range. His own fists came up. Ford watched, amazed, as Hibberd stepped in and delivered a crisp one-two: a left jab into the
side of JJ’s jaw, then a right uppercut that snapped his head back and sent him staggering against the wall.

  The crowd, so recently cleaved by JJ’s rush, had reformed into an untidy circle around them. One or two of the men were removing their jackets. A woman in her sixties – bleached hair, leathery orange skin and a great deal of gold jewellery – took the girl with Hibberd to one side. Ford saw the flesh of the younger woman’s bicep dent under the pressure of her captor’s grip.

  ‘Do ’im, JJ,’ a man called out. Ford saw Rye Bolter yelling, his eyes red from weeping but now narrowed into hate-filled slits.

  Ford checked for traffic, though Endless Street was quiet at this time of day, and recrossed the road. He strode towards the circle penning in the two brawlers, ID held aloft, and bellowed a command.

  ‘Police! Step back!’

  Heads turned, and he saw expressions of anger, frustration, suspicion and even regret. Nothing like a good street fight to clear the air and release a bit of pent-up emotion. Nevertheless.

  He pushed through the onlookers, who didn’t part for him the way they had for JJ, until he reached the centre. Hibberd had JJ in a headlock and JJ was pummelling Hibberd in the region of his kidneys. Neither man appeared to be tiring, or suffering overmuch.

  Ford ascribed both symptoms to an excess of adrenaline, coupled in JJ’s case with a healthy dose of alcohol. Alcohol and maybe something that came not in a glass but in a small plastic bag.

  Pocketing his ID, he took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders and waded in. He grabbed Hibberd’s left arm and twisted it up so he had to release JJ. Free of the headlock, JJ spun round, ready to mount a counter-attack, only to come face to face with Ford.

  ‘Don’t,’ Ford said.

  Panting, JJ and Hibberd both glared at him. He returned their stares. Fantastic! He’d arrived in the nick of time to save the day, and neither man wanted rescuing.

  ‘He started it,’ Hibberd said. ‘You saw. He went for me.’

  ‘He’s trying it on with Tommy’s girlfriend,’ JJ retorted. ‘My baby brother ain’t even cold, and this scum’s making a move.’

  ‘I don’t care who started it,’ Ford said, feeling more like a yard prefect at his son’s school than a detective. ‘And I don’t care who’s going out with whom. If you want to fight, get yourselves to a gym. Don’t do it in the street. And especially not on my patch.’

  No sense getting into a prolonged discussion. If they didn’t heed his words, he’d leave it to the on-duty response and patrol shift to sort them out. He turned and left the Bolters and their associates to find what solace they could in the nearest pub.

  So Hibberd and Tommy weren’t just professional rivals. They’d also been seeing the same young woman. Her relationships with the two men could have been sequential, but Ford felt that was unlikely given the circumstances of Tommy’s untimely death.

  Tommy could have found out and confronted Hibberd. But then what? Had a situation most people would regard as commonplace led to murder?

  He couldn’t see it. Or, not precisely. Fights got out of hand all the time. Any copper working in a town of any size, even one as quiet as Salisbury, would know that. As the saying went, one punch could kill.

  But he couldn’t see a fight over a woman escalating into a sniper-style takedown followed by a full dismemberment. What he could see, however, were two separate grievances between Hibberd and Tommy. One in each direction. And that was interesting.

  He heard footsteps.

  ‘Ford!’

  Ford stopped. Turned. Saw JJ running towards him.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I hear you’ve been up at Alverchalke Manor asking questions.’

  Ford kept his face neutral, hiding his shock. Someone had leaked already. ‘Who from?’

  ‘Never mind who from. I heard, that’s all. Was it one of them? One of them rich bastards up at Alverchalke?’

  The answer came easily to Ford’s lips. ‘No. It wasn’t.’

  He looked JJ square in the eye. Did JJ believe him? He’d bloody better. Because it might have been one of them. And if not them, their gamekeeper. Who had coincidentally rocked up for the inquest with Tommy’s squeeze on his arm.

  He wasn’t about to feed JJ’s thirst for revenge, though. The last thing he needed was a Bolter posse advancing on Alverchalke Manor in the dead of night with pitchforks and flaming torches. Or, more likely, sawn-offs and pickaxe handles.

  JJ turned away and stalked back to the crowd waiting for him. Ford returned to Bourne Hill, striving to think of a new angle he could follow that would yield results before Tommy’s wake.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Midway through the next morning, Ford’s PC pinged with an incoming email from George. She’d fast-tracked the PM on the second corpse. As usual, he read her covering email first.

  The body was male, aged between sixty-five and seventy-five. As he’d expected, death wasn’t due to drowning. No water in the lungs. But the true cause sparked an instant connection to Tommy Bolter. George had found a .22 bullet in the cranium. Plus stippling and powder burns under his chin that indicated a point-blank shot. He’d been in the water for a week to ten days. Meaning he’d been killed before Tommy. That was interesting.

  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.