by Andy Maslen
But Joe wasn’t suicidal. Nor a murderer. However, after their chats, Ford now thought he had a shrewd idea who was.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Hannah drove over to Trowbridge in her Mini, looking forward to spending some time with machines. She liked machines. They were logical and you didn’t need to empathise with them, which she could do with people but found tiring. On arrival, she signed in, then made her way to the garage.
The vast concrete-floored space smelled of motor oil. The heaviness of it didn’t bother her the way strong aftershave or perfume did. When Juno – her private nickname for Sandy, after a Roman goddess renowned for her strength, vigour and statuesque beauty – wore her Chanel No5, it made conversation with the big boss difficult.
In a protective visor, navy boiler suit, leather gauntlets and steel-toed boots, Hannah brought the blades of a large pair of hydraulic cutters to bear on the load bay of Hibberd’s Land Rover.
The motor-pool manager had introduced himself as Robbie Harris, but said that she should call him Tweed. She’d got it at once and felt inordinately pleased with herself. ‘Because of Harris Tweed,’ she’d said, to a nod from Robbie. She’d explained to him about her aversion to loud noise and he’d found her some ear defenders, which she’d gratefully settled over her ears.
Just as well, she thought, wincing at the muffled screech as the blades sliced through the steel as if it were cheese.
With two cuts through the side wall of the load bay, she placed the hissing cutters on the ground and signalled to Tweed for help. Together, they pulled on the metal flap, and with barely a protest it folded down like the side of a cardboard box.
Now she could get at the layer of dirt she’d seen when peering into the corners on her preliminary inspection. Kneeling, she brought her face closer to the channel in the pressed steel.
She pushed up her visor so she could look even closer, and there! She saw it. A dark patch in the dry, gritty earth. Something stuck to it caught the light.
Sliding the gauntlets off first, she fished out the magnifier from the boiler suit’s pocket. What she saw made her smile. From the other pocket she fetched out an evidence bag and a pair of tweezers, picked up the hair and deposited it into the bag.
She scraped some of the stained earth into a debris pot and screwed the lid on tight.
Over the next two hours, she and Tweed reduced the Land Rover’s rear half to so many bright-edged pieces of otherwise grimy steel. She found further traces of what, with ninety-five per cent certainty, she’d identified on sight as blood. But no more hairs.
It didn’t matter. Ninety-five per cent was enough. Once she was back at her workstation at Bourne Hill, she’d spend some pleasurable time on her own, delivering the other five per cent.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The entire case against Hibberd rested on a single bullet fired from a gun not bearing his fingerprints, and his written confession. Ford suspected neither would last five minutes under the scrutiny of a skilful defence barrister. Not that he had any intention of letting things progress that far.
Everything else pointed away from Hibberd, from the staged suicide to the medically improbable PTSD. As far as Ford was concerned, Hibberd was off the hook for murder. But he knew who he’d caught on its sharp point instead. The gamekeeper was protecting his boss: the man who’d saved his life in Afghanistan. Or, just possibly, his daughter. Maybe Ford could yet forestall JJ’s taking the law into his own hands.
Jools came into his office. Her eyes were bright.
‘I spoke to Gwyneth Pearce this afternoon. She remembered something Tommy said after he witnessed Owen’s murder. Tommy overheard the killer saying . . .’ Jools consulted her notebook. ‘Hold on, here it is. “This land’s been in my family for a thousand years.” You know what that means, don’t you, guv? My family. It’s His toffee-nosed Lordship himself. You were right!’
Ford nodded, offered her a smile and some well-earned praise. But once she’d gone, he returned to the snag he’d been worrying at like it was a shred of loose skin on the side of a nail. The ‘Lucy Problem’, he’d started calling it.
The lying about Tommy didn’t help her case. But he could imagine plenty of upper-class women feeling acute embarrassment or shame at having enjoyed a sexual relationship with someone so far below them on the social scale. She’d lied about not liking shooting, too. Add the unresolved question – why two guns? – and the Lucy Problem got worse from there. And ‘my family’ could have been spoken by any of the Martivals.
On the plus side, Gwyneth’s jogged memory – although as hearsay, virtually worthless in court – gave him reasonable grounds to arrest Lord Baverstock.
With him in custody, Ford would be free to conduct a second search of his house, his outbuildings, the whole bloody estate if he wanted to, including Lucy’s quarters. They’d get his phone and his computer. They wouldn’t even need Gwyneth’s testimony. And they’d have his DNA. And Lucy’s. Nothing to compare it with yet, but Hannah might return from HQ with good news.
Jan’s search of Hibberd’s place had come up with nothing. He hadn’t even password-protected his computer. But that spurred Ford on, rather than depressing him, because it reinforced his feeling that Hibberd had nothing, or very little, to do with either murder. Jan had also confirmed with Berret & Sartain that Joe had taken in his .22 on the twenty-eighth.
He wrote ‘The Lucy Problem’ at the top of a sheet of paper, and tapped the pencil against his front teeth. He tried to bring the problem into sharp focus.
He was ready to arrest Lord Baverstock. But now, Ford wondered whether Lucy had shot Owen, even if by accident. The trouble was, he didn’t have a shred of evidence linking her to either death.
Well, an internal voice said, why don’t you go back over the case documents and see if you’ve missed anything? And don’t forget, Hannah’s over at HQ taking Hibberd’s Land Rover to pieces. Maybe she’ll come up with something.
He had other priorities, though, and one of these needed sorting. He straightened his tie and went to see Sandy.
‘You’re a star,’ she said, smelling the coffee in front of her. ‘That’s not the usual muck.’
‘It’s from CID’s secret stash,’ he said, taking the chair facing her across her paper-strewn desk. He pointed at the documents slithering every which way. ‘Having fun?’
She glared at him over the rim of the coffee mug. ‘It’s lucky you just pinched a decent cup of coffee for me, DI Ford, or I would have torn you a new one for that little question. But to answer it honestly, no, I am not having fun. Having fun would be enduring a root canal without anaesthetic. Having fun would be . . . would be . . .’
‘A romantic dinner with Martin Peterson?’
Her eyes flashed. ‘Let’s not get carried away! What did you bring me?’
‘A suspect. You’re not going to like it, but I do have strong and compelling grounds for suspicion. Plus a ton of high-quality circumstantial evidence we can build on once we start the search.’
‘Why do I get the feeling I know who it is?’
‘Because you haven’t lost your razor-sharp copper’s instinct for a wrong ’un?’
She shook her head. ‘Flattery will get you nowhere. Plus I leave all that gut-feel bullshit to you. I don’t know how you do it, but it works.’
Ford looked at Sandy calmly.
‘It’s Lord Baverstock, isn’t it?’ she asked at last.
‘It is.’
‘Jesus, Henry! You do like to go after the rich and powerful, don’t you? I thought his gamekeeper wrote out his confession in a suicide note?’
‘He did. But it’s so flimsy you could poke holes in it with a feather. I think he’s protecting someone, probably his boss.’ No need to mention Lucy. Not yet. ‘Remember, this is the man who saved his life. That’s a big debt to carry.’
Sandy sighed. ‘How do you want to handle the arrest?’
‘I believe he committed murder with a firearm. He’s got access
to an arsenal of weapons. He’s ex-army, and from an infantry regiment, which means he’s used to fighting. On the fight-or-flight matrix, he scores maximum on likelihood to fight,’ Ford said. ‘It has to be a firearms arrest.’
‘Agreed.’
‘This is a full-fat firearms deployment. No softly-softly to catch this monkey. We take him at home: contain and call-out. It’s a big house. We’ll need a dozen AFOs, attack-dog handler, negotiator, the works. Plus we’ve only got Joe’s word the guns were all locked up in the stable block.’
‘Fine. Write up the risk assessment and get it in your policy book. But in principle, that’s agreed. I’ll be gold commander and I’ll talk to HQ and the firearms guys. It’ll be Gordon again as tactical firearms commander.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Anything else?’
‘I want you to help set up the arrest. Do a bit of honest police work for a change instead of playing with spreadsheets.’
Her mouth dropped open. ‘You cheeky sod! Right, come on, then. Brief me.’
‘I rubbed him up the wrong way when we first met. And when I went out to see him last time, I pissed him off further.’
‘So?’
‘So, we use it. Call him and lay it on thick about how disappointed you were in my actions. Say we’ve got compelling evidence beyond the suicide note that points to Joe’s guilt in both murders,’ Ford said. ‘That will relax him and nudge him into dropping his guard. Ask him if you can personally come to see him at home because you have some questions for him about Joe’s background in the army. Say we suspect Joe has PTSD and we need to get a read on how seriously it affected him after the time Lord Baverstock saved his life.’
‘Then instead of me, he gets the full “come out with your hands up” treatment. You’re a devious man, did you know that, Henry?’ she said, grinning.
‘I like to say “creative”. You’re a detective superintendent. That plays to his sense of self-importance,’ Ford said. ‘Tell him he’s got better insights into Joe’s character than anyone else alive. He’ll love the idea he’s been handed an opportunity to weaken the prosecution case by fleshing out Joe’s PTSD defence. And being the kind of man he is, I suspect he won’t credit you with the smarts to see that’s what he’s doing.’
‘Did I just call you devious?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Scratch that. It’s not even close. You’re the Machiavelli of Major Crimes.’
Ford grinned. ‘Now there’s a nickname I could get to like!’
‘Last question. When?’
‘I thought tomorrow. If he’s around. Say ten a.m.’
‘Agreed.’ She rubbed her hands together. ‘I’m getting quite excited now. I’ll call him this evening.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Right. Get going. And let’s hope we can achieve all this without shots being fired. The last thing I want to have to explain to the PCC, the chief con and News at bloody Ten is how we created the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in rural bloody Wiltshire.’
‘Not good for the brand?’
She glared at him. ‘Not even slightly.’
Back in his office, Ford started drawing up the risk assessment matrix on Lord Baverstock’s arrest.
Finishing it after half an hour, he looked at the chewed end of his pencil. The Lucy Problem wouldn’t leave him be.
Ford looked up to see Sandy in his doorway. He checked the time reflexively – 7.03 p.m. – good to see the brass putting in the hours.
‘Come in, boss. Take the weight off.’
She sat down and leaned towards his desk. ‘Your plan needs tweaking. I just spoke to Baverstock. He’s not at home. He’s in London, staying at his club. Bigwood’s. I arranged to meet him tomorrow afternoon at three to talk about Joe Hibberd’s supposed PTSD.’
‘Right. Actually, that works,’ Ford said, running through a couple of scenarios in his head. ‘We’ve got two more options for the arrest. One, we could plot up outside the club with a couple of Met AFOs and jump him when he comes out.’
‘Huge potential risk to the public if he’s got a firearm. I can’t see him with a shotgun, but if he’s ex-army he might have a nine mil,’ she said. ‘He may not be expecting to be picked up, but he’s got to be on his guard. Plus we’d have to work with the Met and you know how leaky they are.’
‘Or two, we do a hard stop on the route between London and home. Take him on a quiet bit of road.’
‘Better. You could get him secure without a shootout in central London.’
‘It’s the less risky of the two,’ Ford said. ‘We get the Met to pick him up on ANPR on the M3, then we send a firearms commander plus four AFO units up to intercept him on the A303. Or the A30 if he decides to come via Stockbridge.’
‘What do you want to do with Hibberd?’
‘Keep him here until the arrest’s out of the way. He’s been charged with an indictable offence, so can you authorise another twelve hours?’
‘Authorised. Next?’
‘Nothing else.’
Hannah appeared in the doorway holding a folder. Five minutes later she’d briefed them on her findings from the Land Rover. Traces of blood whose type matched Tommy Bolter’s. And a hair stuck to the blood, implying the blood was still wet when the hair was shed. DNA tests were being fast-tracked with results expected the following day.
Ford asked what kind of hair, hoping she’d say long and blonde. Her answer set him back a step.
‘Short and brown.’
Ford felt the Lucy Problem wrap itself in another layer. Hannah explained the hair had its root attached and had also been fast-tracked.
Once under arrest, Lord Baverstock would have to provide a DNA sample. They’d compare it to the DNA from the hair, and then would that be that? Or would Ford find himself still tugging at one more loose end?
Hannah stood. ‘I have to leave now. It’s been an exhausting day and tomorrow’s going to be busier. Good night.’
‘Night, Hannah,’ Ford and Sandy said in unison.
Sandy smiled once Hannah had gone.
‘I like her,’ she said.
‘Me too.’
‘I suggest you do the same as Wix,’ Sandy said, getting to her feet. ‘Get some sleep tonight. Like the lady said, tomorrow’s going to be a big day.’
Ford did as he was told, deciding after a quick mental struggle not to reveal to Sandy his suspicions about Lucy Martival. Or his concerns about the Bolters.
After Ford and Sam had cleared up from supper, Sam disappeared off to his room. Smiling at his son’s thunderous ascent of the stairs, Ford opened a beer and took it through to the sitting room. He took a long pull and looked out at the lawn, where a pair of collared doves were waddling along together like an old married couple.
Sam reappeared, holding a length of lime-green climbing rope. He waggled it at Ford.
‘Look. I got it off eBay. Five pounds. It’s great for practising. Plus a carabiner.’
Ford’s insides fluttered. He ignored the sensation and smiled. ‘Go on then. Tie me a double figure-eight.’
Sam grinned. ‘Too easy!’
Ford watched as Sam’s slender fingers doubled, twisted and threaded the rope into a perfectly good knot.
‘What next?’ Sam asked.
‘Bowline.’
This one took longer, but within twenty seconds, Sam flourished a decent bowline with a biggish loop. ‘Another?’
Ford smiled. ‘Right. Let’s see how well you’ve been doing. Tie me a clove hitch.’
Sam furrowed his brow, but the knot he tied round the dull grey carabiner was on the money. Ford was impressed, though below the pride he felt welling fear.
‘That’s good, Sam. Really good. Keep it up.’
‘I’m going to. Don’t worry. How was your day?’
‘Busy.’
‘OK. That was brief,’ Sam said with a frown.
‘Sorry, mate. Can’t say more. Hopefully tomorrow evening, though.’ He took a deep breath and let it
out quietly before speaking again. ‘Listen, have you seen any more of Rye Bolter?’
Sam shook his head. ‘No.’ Then he grinned. ‘I think that gorilla in a blue suit might have scared him away.’
‘You saw him, did you?’
‘You might want to send him on a covert surveillance course.’
‘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?’
