by Andy Maslen
Still clutching the copy of the search warrant, the maid ran towards a door and disappeared. Ford waited. He knew what was coming. Rich or poor, people reacted the same way to police intrusion into their property.
The hallway smelled pleasantly of furniture polish and the scent of roses, a couple of dozen of which – of the palest pink – stood in a huge glass vase on a table.
He heard the clack of heels on tiled floor. Straightened up and turned to meet – who? Lady Baverstock? Yes. In a navy dress, buttoned at the front, and matching suede stilettos. He took in the fierce gaze and tight mouth. She looked furious.
No ‘Coco’ for you today then, Ford.
Arriving in front of him, she brandished the search warrant in his face.
‘Inspector, what is the meaning of this? Why are all these police officers in my house?’
‘That is a copy of a search warrant, Lady Baverstock. I obtained it yesterday from a magistrate. It entitles me to search this property and those allied to it.’
She flushed. ‘This is preposterous! We’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘I’m not saying you have. The warrant is to search for material we believe may have a significant bearing on a murder investigation. I am drawing no conclusions about anyone in particular,’ he said. ‘Is there somewhere you could go while we work? A friend’s house, perhaps?’
Her nostrils flared. ‘You must be bloody joking! I’m not leaving here and letting those people with their great big boots wreck my home. I’m staying.’
‘That’s your right. But you can only observe, and please stand well out of the way. If you try to interfere with my officers, I will have no option but to arrest you for obstruction.’
Breathing heavily, she turned on her heel and stalked off.
‘Lady Baverstock?’ he called after her.
She stopped. Turned to face him, still glaring. ‘What?’
‘I need the key to the gun safe. Could you fetch it for me, please?’
‘Fetch it yourself. It’s in a key box on the wall outside my husband’s office. First door on the right over there,’ she said, pointing to a corridor.
Following her instructions, Ford found a wooden box screwed to the wall. Inside, six sets of keys hung on little hooks. Each bore a label except one, linked by a short chain to a tiny brass shotgun.
He pocketed it and went outside, heading for the stable block and the workshop containing the gun safe. He met a uniform coming the other way.
‘Found the safe, sir. We just need the key to the padlock.’
Ford held it out to him. ‘Here you go.’
‘Thanks, sir,’ said the officer before trotting off back to the stables.
Ford followed him. Inside the workshop, a single-storey brick building with a pitched slate roof, a couple 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 giv
e 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 invited anyone. So nobody should have been there, ringing her doorbell at night.
She pushed Uta Frith off her lap and went downstairs, feeling a squirm of anxiety in her stomach. She could see a dark shape through the frosted glass panels in the upper half of the door. Her heart beating rapidly, she put the safety chain on and then peered through the spyhole.
A man stood there, looking around. Early thirties. She forced herself to be more precise. Thirty-one- to thirty-three-year-old male IC1. Height between five-eight and five-ten. Stocky, bordering on fat. Short light-brown hair swept back from a high, oddly bulging forehead. Narrow eyes. Clean-shaven.
She opened the door and looked through the narrow gap the chain permitted.
‘Can I help you?’
‘You Hannah Fellowes?’ His accent was local, his voice rough.
‘Yes. Who are you?’
‘This is for you,’ he said, and thrust a padded envelope through the gap before turning and leaving, shaking his head.
She didn’t like people turning up at her front door uninvited and ringing her doorbell. Especially not when they pushed unmarked packages into her hands. But he’d gone, and that was good.
Her pulse calming, she closed the door and took the envelope upstairs. At her desk, she examined the exterior of the envelope. It was new. No previous labels stuck over with paper or scribbled out with black marker. She pressed it experimentally. No lumps, bumps or protrusions.
She turned the package over in her hands, wanting to open it but frightened of what might happen. Might the flap conceal a trigger of some kind?
She told herself off. This was Salisbury. People didn’t drop off bombs in Jiffy bags at eight in the evening.
Then she had an idea. She took a modelling knife out of her desk drawer and used its razor-sharp blade to slit the side of the envelope. Grey fluff spilled from the gaping cut and she tutted as it tumbled to the floor. That would have to be vacuumed up immediately after she’d seen what was inside the package.
She lifted the top of the envelope using the point of the knife. She saw the edges of sheets of paper. Breathing more easily, she slid out a stapled report of some kind. No images, just a lot of text, set in long, dense paragraphs. The headline intrigued her.
ACCIDENT REPORT: CONFIDENTIAL – INTERNAL USE ONLY
The spilled fluff forgotten, and with Uta Frith reinstalled on her lap, she began reading. It was a report into the death by drowning of Louisa Kathryn Ford, written by the Maritime Operations Controller at Milford Haven Coastguard Operations Centre.
Half an hour later, she put it down. In many respects, it echoed and reinforced the findings of the coroner’s inquest. She spent another half an hour cross-checking it against her own research.
But when she’d finished, she had underlined a few sentences in the final paragraph of the coastguard report that weren’t anywhere in the other documentation she’d unearthed online.
My only concern is, why did Mr Ford leave his wife in the first place? He says he dislodged the rock that broke her leg. And we confirmed it wasn’t securely bedded into the stack. But surely the sensible course was to stay with her? He could have roped them both on higher up, and either kept trying to get a signal or simply ridden out the tide.
Frowning, Hannah put the report aside and looked at her own summary of the death of Ford’s wife.
Although not attempting one of the nine (9) established routes, Henry and Louisa were experienced climbers.
Any new route likely to have been within their capabilities.
Climbing is a leisure activity. No coercion or pressure involved, unlike, for example, military training.
Accident investigation revealed dislodged block (underlying fissure result of natural wear) broke LF’s right femur (compound fracture), causing severe blood loss and limiting her mobility, making a climb out impossible.
Unusually high tide caused by ‘once in a century’ freak alteration to Gulf Stream.
HF roped LF to rock to prevent her being washed off platform.
HF soloed out in order to effect rescue of LF.
HF called coastguard as soon as mobile signal restored.
Weakened by injury, shock and blood loss, LF drowned as tide rose.
No arrest of HF by police: no criminal charges brought.
Coroner’s inquest verdict: death by misadventure, i.e. death caused by accident while taking known and voluntarily accepted risks. No negligence.
Point Four worried her. She could see a different version of events now. One where Henry didn’t dislodge the rock by accident. Had he kicked it down on to Lou on purpose? Or wrenched it free and aimed it down on to her? Maybe he wasn’t even going for her leg. He might have tried to kill her outright.
‘No!’ she said, startling Uta Frith, who mewed plaintively and jumped down, scattering envelope padding as she left.
She ignored the cat. Henry wouldn’t do that. She knew him. OK, so she didn’t have the same easy emotional insights as people like Jools did. Or Henry himself. But she had analysed him. She had thought hard about everything he’d told her. And she’d done all that research herself. It couldn’t be true. It wouldn’t be true. She had found a family at Bourne Hill. Now somebody was trying to take that security away from her. This was malice at work.
She wouldn’t talk to Henry about it. Not in the middle of a case. She could wait. She wanted, needed, him as a friend. She wanted to help him heal. To move on. To unstick. Was that the right word? It would do.
She had a brainwave. She knew that inviting someone for dinner was a good way to open up the conversation. She could do that, present her research findings and then show him the coastguard report and tell him about the man who’d delivered it by hand. They could discuss it together. She resolved to ask him to dinner after the case was closed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
At 5.50 a.m. the next day, Ford raised the binoculars Richen had passed him and focused on the kitchen window of Hibberd’s cottage.
He could see Hibberd’s head and shoulders. He was sitting perfectly still, looking at something in front of him. The windowsill cut off the view, so Ford couldn’t tell what was occupying his attention.
Behind him he heard muttered conversation and metallic snaps and scrapes as the AFOs readied their weapons. He’d also brought a canine unit and could hear the handler murmuring to his dog.
Inside the cottage that had been his home since the major had rescued him, sat former Grenadier Guards sergeant Joe Hibberd. Molly and Bess, his border collies, padded round the kitchen, their claws clicking on the slate floor tiles. He sat at a table pitted and scarred from many decades of use, but otherwise spotlessly clean.
Joe had risen early. And, as usual, he’d made a pot of tea. Strong, like the brews they had in Helmand. He’d eaten a hearty breakfast: sausages, fried eggs, fried bread, bacon and baked beans. Two thick slices of toast and marmalade. He hadn’t moved since, spending the time flicking through a photo album of his time in the army and fingering the set of medals he kept on his dressing table. The props weren’t in the plan: they’d been his own idea. He hadn’t troubled the major with them. Nor with his additional piece of drama.
In front of him sat his Willow pattern plate, smeared with brown sauce and a few slowly congealing streaks of bacon fat. He placed the plate on the floor and the dogs padded over to share the unusual bounty.
He reread the note he’d written before going to bed. Nodded. It would do the job.
His shotgun lay on the table. Its wooden stock shone in the early-morning sunlight coming through the leaded window. He inh
aled its smell: gun oil, cleaner and polish. Beside it, a half-empty box of shells waited.
Through the open window, he could hear the chatter of rotor blades. Altitude 5,000–8,000 feet, he estimated. It would be a Wiltshire Police Eurocopter EC135 in navy and yellow livery. He saw them from time to time, overflying the estate. Nothing like as loud as the Apaches, Merlins and Chinooks they’d had in Afghanistan. Decent birds, all the same.
Joe put his knife, fork, plate and mug in the dishwasher. He added a tablet to the compartment, set it to a short cycle and clicked the door closed.
He placed the photo album and medals on the kitchen counter, dampened a cloth to wipe the table, then folded it and hung it over the swan-necked tap. A place for everything, and everything in its place. The dogs were lying down, watching him move around the kitchen. Their eyes were bright, expectant. They thought they’d be going out soon, accompanying him to some part of the estate or another. Molly’s tail thumped lazily against the padded edge of her bed.
‘Not today, girls,’ he said, sadly. ‘I think Major Martival will be taking care of you from now on.’
He reached for the Browning, thumbed the latch and broke it. He took two red cartridges from a box, inspected their brass caps and inserted them into the breech. With a snap, loud in the silent kitchen, he closed the gun.
The action had disturbed his note, which shifted off-square by a few degrees. Tutting, he realigned it with the edge of the table, beside his phone.
Even though he’d been expecting it, the call startled him. He looked back at the dogs and lifted his phone to his ear. ‘Hello?’
‘Joe, this is Inspector Ford. I’d like you to come to the front door with your hands on top of your head, please. Then follow the instructions given to you.’
‘You going to arrest me, Inspector?’
‘Afraid so, Joe. Now, don’t do anything silly, OK? I want this to go smoothly so we can all get home in one piece. You included.’
