Land Rites (Detective Ford) Read online

  Pete handed her a large plastic magnifying glass, which she placed close to the right eye. She straightened and handed it back.

  ‘As I observed with my own, less insulted eyes, the petechiae are streaks, not the usual blossom shapes we would expect with asphyxia. And the poor man’s corneas are abraded. Something caused the internal pressure in the skull to rise dramatically, forcing out the eyeballs.’

  Ford saw it. The damage to the ear. The blood clots. The rise in internal pressure. Someone had shot Tommy through the ear. Instead of exiting his skull, the bullet had ricocheted off the bone and stayed inside. He felt sure it was somewhere in the grotesque array of body parts before him.

  ‘I think he was shot,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a possibility. Let’s find out, shall we?’ George said. ‘Stryker saw, please, Pete.’

  As she brought the whining power tool’s oscillating blade down on to the skull, releasing a wisp of foul-smelling smoke, Ford peered at the entry wound. He saw no stippling or powder burns, which ruled out anything up close like an execution-style murder.

  He pictured himself as the shooter. I’m taking a long-range shot because I don’t want to risk being seen. I’m using a rifle. A good one, accurate. That means I’m a good shot. I’m confident I can kill Tommy from a distance.

  Pete placed a shallow stainless-steel kidney bowl by the opened skull. George scooped out the brain tissue and deposited it in the bowl in a series of soft plops. She started probing with the scalpel and the tips of her fingers.

  Ford watched, but his mind was elsewhere. The shooter probably had their own place. But if they shared a house, they’d have a workshop, basement or outbuilding where they could cut up a body without being disturbed. They owned at least one firearm, almost certainly a rifle. And they were a decent shot. He made a mental note to look at local gun clubs and their membership lists.

  ‘It’s not here,’ George said, pushing the kidney bowl away from her and wiping her smeared fingers on her apron. ‘But don’t despair. I once recovered a pistol round from a woman’s spleen. She, too, had been killed with a shot to the head.’

  ‘Best guess?’ Ford asked.

  ‘The torso. It could be lodged in the viscera, muscle tissue or even wedged between two bones.’

  ‘We’re going to leave you to it,’ Ford said. ‘Can you let me know as soon as you find it?’

  ‘Me too, please?’ Hannah said. ‘I’ll come and collect it. We can start running ballistics analysis on it. I’ll alert the lab.’

  Later that morning, at the briefing in the sugar cube, Ford learned from Mick that forty-three people fitted the profile he’d drawn up for workers in the meat trade. All were based within five miles of Salisbury. All held either a Level 2 Certificate or Diploma in Professional Butchery, or had done an apprenticeship. That included retail, wholesale and abattoir staff. Of the forty-three, eleven either lived at home or in a shared flat, so he’d downgraded them for lack of somewhere private to do the cutting.

  After the briefing, Ford checked his emails. George had sent hi-res photos of the properly cleaned-up tattoos. As he looked them over, he pictured another: a knotted heart of blue and yellow climbing ropes, ‘L4E’ below in a rugged typeface. Lou had come back from town one sunny Saturday afternoon and proudly showed him her cling-filmed left shoulder.

  ‘It’s for us!’ she’d said. ‘Roped together for eternity.’

  Oh, Lou. If only you knew.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The raft of documents piled up on Ford’s desk clogged his brain. He couldn’t get a handle on the investigation from behind a desk. He stood abruptly, knocking his policy book against his half-full mug.

  He saved the mug but the resulting jerk slopped cold coffee over an untidy sheaf of canvass reports. Figuring they’d dry if he just spread them out, he left his office, took a right and walked along the corridor to the stairwell. Five minutes later he pushed through the door to Forensics.

  Hannah was at her desk, peering at a website.

  ‘Hi, got a minute?’ he asked as he approached.

  She snatched at her mouse and clicked to close the browser. Then she swivelled to face him. ‘Henry! Hi. You’re here. In Forensics. Why?’

  He observed the pallor of her cheeks, which were normally a healthy pink. The way her eyes kept darting to her monitor.

  ‘Are you all right? You seem on edge.’

  Beyond her left shoulder he could see an open document. Nothing beyond the four-word title was legible at this distance. His stomach lurched.

  Rock-climbing risk assessment.

  What the hell? Was she investigating the accident? He’d opened up to her a while back about Lou dying at Pen-y-Holt sea stack. Now it looked as though, in her obsessive way, she’d got her teeth into it as another puzzle to pick away at. Had he made a mistake? Hannah was a woman who, having thought of something to say, never stopped to think whether she should. A woman developing a friendship with Sam. This was unwelcome news.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Hannah said. ‘Just, you know . . .’ She tugged on her long plait of blonde hair. ‘Work!’ She rolled her eyes, clicking her mouse to close the document.

  She’d managed a simulation of professional boredom combined with overwork. A bad simulation.

  ‘Fancy a trip?’ he asked her, filing his discovery away for now.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘The site of the body dump. I can’t get a feel for the murder cooped up in here.’

  ‘Isn’t Jools or one of the others free?’

  That was odd. Hannah never turned down requests like this one. Since her first day, she’d enjoyed and even volunteered to take on additional duties that fell way beyond the remit of a CSI. Even the deputy chief.

  ‘They’re all busy. I could go on my own if you’re in the middle of something?’ Like sticking your nose in where it’s definitely not wanted.

  She shook her head. Now she did offer a smile. Genuine, too.

  ‘I’ll come. Help ya woik de angles,’ she croaked in a cod New York accent Ford suspected nobody had used since the 1940s. Was she trying to deflect attention from the document he’d glimpsed on her screen?

  ‘Come on, then.’

  Inside the cordon again, they walked over to the partially excavated sett and stood shoulder to shoulder at its rim.

  Ford looked down at the disturbed earth. ‘Have you—’

  ‘Taken a soil sample? Yes, several. We’re analysing them right now. It’ll give us an index reference when you arrest a suspect.’

  He turned to her. ‘Your confidence is welcome. Thanks.’

  ‘You’ll get your man, Henry. Like the Mounties. They’re the—’

  Now Ford finished her sentence. ‘Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Did they consult you, too?’

  ‘They did, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Serial killer?’

  ‘The Wapawekka Strangler. He killed eight college students and dumped their bodies in the lake of that name.’

  ‘Did you catch him?’

  ‘Mm-hmm. Epithelial cells on a rope fragment in his garage.’

  ‘So what do you think about this one?’ he asked her.

  She compressed her lips and frowned. Ford waited.

  ‘I think,’ she said after at least a minute had elapsed, ‘we are not looking at a domestic killing.’

  ‘Agreed. The MO is way off.’

  ‘And I also don’t think we’re dealing with a lust-rage murder.’

  ‘Care to explain?’

  ‘I saw no evidence of sexual injuries as the body parts were being brought out.’

  ‘And the killer had done the opposite of posing his victim.’

  ‘Exactly. He went to some trouble to hide the evidence.’

  ‘Serial?’

  ‘It’s possible. But for Salisbury, statistically unlikely.’

  Ford stared down into the sett’s gaping maw. Pictured himself lugging heavy pieces of flesh from a tractor trailer of some kind and dropping them into
the black depths.

  ‘If he’d been serious about stopping us finding the body, he could have burned it, smashed up the bones and ploughed them under,’ Ford said. ‘Or run it through a wood chipper and fed the slurry to pigs. Plenty of ways you could do it in the countryside. Every farm for miles around would offer at least one of those methods.’

  ‘Not a farmer, then?’

  ‘But he knows the area. Look around you.’ Ford swept his arm in an arc that took in the fluttering crime scene tape, the uniforms on guard, a CSI van, and a dozen uniforms on their hands and knees conducting a fingertip search. ‘You can’t see a house, a road, even a power line. It’s the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘Polly Evans found it, though,’ Hannah countered.

  Ford nodded. ‘True. And she said she often saw other dog-walkers.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s feasible to use dog ownership as a suspect identification criterion.’

  ‘That takes me back to the point about knowing the area. That sett’s huge. I’ve seen others, but they’re much smaller. You could get a hand down one but not the rest. He knew about it.’

  ‘Who would have that sort of detailed local knowledge?’

  Ford scratched at his stubble. He’d forgotten to shave. Again. ‘The dog-walkers. The farmer.’ He looked over at the shallow chalk stream. ‘That’s not deep enough for anglers.’

  ‘Birdwatchers?’ Hannah asked, pointing up as a charm of goldfinches twittered overhead.

  ‘I’m not seeing a demented twitcher as our killer.’ He paused. The goldfinches had reminded him of the magazine in the pizza place he and Sam had eaten in the previous night. And the article about Lord Baverstock.

  ‘Henry?’

  The vision dissipated. Ford blinked.

  Hannah pulled her mouth to one side in a quirked smile. ‘You went far away.’

  ‘Sorry. I was thinking. What if Mr Ball’s a tenant farmer? Then somebody else owns the land. And if they did, they might know about the sett, mightn’t they?’

  ‘I suppose so. I don’t know very much about lords and ladies.’

  An admission of ignorance from Hannah was so rare, even in their limited acquaintance, that Ford couldn’t help himself.

  ‘I’ll make a note of that,’ he said. ‘Our deputy chief CSI has a gap in her knowledge base.’

  Even as he said it, he knew he’d blundered again. Hannah’s face fell.

  ‘I’m sorry. There aren’t any in the US, and before that I was at university. I should do some background reading.’

  Ford reached out and laid a gentle hand on her arm. Smiled. ‘It’s fine, honestly. You know more than anyone else in the department – hell, the whole station – put together. I was just twitting you. I shouldn’t have.’

  He let his hand fall. Not wanting her to misread the signal.

  ‘Landowner. Farmer. Dog-walker. Birdwatcher,’ Hannah said. ‘Or it could be a random stranger scouting a body-dump site.’

  Ford had to agree. But he desperately wanted it not to be. ‘It could be. But he’d be more likely to dump it somewhere familiar. That would mean he lived close by, and there are no houses for miles around.’

  ‘When Dr Eustace gets me the bullet, we’ll have something concrete to go on. Well, metallic.’

  Hannah’s abrupt change of topic didn’t surprise Ford. He knew she preferred science to instinct. Evidence to inspiration. Data to daydreaming. Which was fine. She was an investigator. It was what she did. But in the absence of investigative factors, all activity ceased. Or didn’t even begin.

  And that was where a case needed a detective. Someone who could close their eyes and paint a crime scene into being. Someone who could imagine, with a greater or lesser degree of success, the thoughts running through a killer’s mind in the moments before, during and after a murder. Since Lou, Ford had experienced not merely a greater degree of success, but a one-to-one match. He knew what killers felt.

  On the drive back to Bourne Hill, Ford waited for a long straight stretch of road. He flicked a quick glance at Hannah. Inhaled.

  ‘What were you working on when I came to find you?’ he asked, striving to keep his tone light.

  ‘Working on?’

  ‘Yes. On your PC. Fingerprints? Blood spatter?’ He paused. ‘Report-writing? I saw you’d typed something about mountaineering risks. Was Tommy a climber, then?’

  If Hannah picked up on the irony, she didn’t show it. She hesitated before answering – something of a tell from a self-professed and highly qualified expert in the psychology of lying. ‘It’s for a friend. He’s interested in mountaineering but he’s worried about the risks.’

  Ford nodded. ‘Kind of you. To do some research for him.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He drove on in silence all the way back to Bourne Hill. Maybe she was telling the truth. He suspected she didn’t really know how to lie. So, had his own guilt been riding him when he’d seen the title on her PC screen?

  He hoped so. He had enough to think about without trying to fend off Hannah if she started asking questions about the accident.

  Like JJ’s threat.

  A week was plenty of time when you were investigating a domestic where the husband was sitting in the flat drenched in blood and weeping into his lager. But this one was different. This screamed complex.

  Olly came to see him as soon as he reached Major Crimes.

  ‘I contacted Tommy’s network provider. His phone stopped pinging on Saturday – the one just gone, May the first. The last tower it shook hands with was a few miles south of Coombe Bissett.’

  That particular landscape contained nothing but farm animals, and not very many of them. No significant settlements until you reached Blandford Forum. What was he doing? Who had tracked him there? And who owned the land?

  Ford thanked Olly, registered the smile the young DC tried to hide, and continued his walkaround. Mick’s voice – raised and angry – broke the silence. He caught Ford’s eye and dropped his voice, though Ford could make out every hissed word.

  ‘Yeah, I know that, but I . . . That’s why I want you to . . . OK, I’m sorry! I would like you to at least talk about it before you . . . You can’t—’ Mick scowled at the phone, breathing heavily. Obviously the other party had hung up on him.

  Ford waited for Mick to look at him again. It took a while.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

  Mick pocketed the phone, his face red; whether from anger or embarrassment, Ford couldn’t tell.

  ‘It’s nothing. Kirsty’s just bending my ear as usual. Women, eh. Can’t live with ’em . . .’ Mick went for a shrug and a comedy eye-roll.

  Ford continued towards his office. The door was open. Odd. He always closed it when he left. Entering, he had to suppress a scowl of his own.

  Martin Peterson, police and crime commissioner for Wiltshire, sat behind Ford’s desk. Was leaning back in Ford’s chair. Leafing through Ford’s paperwork. About which Ford now found he cared a great deal.

  Peterson looked up. His smile revealed gleaming teeth. To Ford they looked veneered.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind,’ Peterson said. ‘Someone told me I could wait in here.’

  Ford doubted that. On a scale of one to ten as to how much people disliked the PCC, Ford rated himself a nine. Most of his team would rate themselves a ten. Or above.

  He rounded the desk, forcing Peterson to vacate the chair. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Peterson?’

  ‘No need for all the formality. I am here as your colleague. Your friend, if you’ll let me. Call me Martin. Do you know,’ he said, frowning, ‘I don’t think you’ve ever told me your first name.’

  Ford sat in the chair and shuffled the papers into a pile. He said nothing.

  Clearing his throat, Peterson touched the knot of his fuchsia-pink tie. ‘I hear you’re investigating another murder,’ he said.

  Ford nodded. ‘It’s what we do in Major Crimes.’

  ‘Yes, well, I want you to know I’ll be takin
g an active interest in the case.’

  ‘May I ask why?’

  ‘Oh, come now. No need to be so defensive. A gruesome murder. Body parts’ – he shuddered – ‘disposed of in a hole in the ground—’

  ‘A sett.’

  ‘Fine, a set of body parts—’

  ‘No. They were dumped down a sett. You know . . . where badgers live?’

  There. A flicker of irritation on Peterson’s smooth-cheeked face let Ford know he’d got to him. He’d pricked that bubble of fake affability.

  ‘I don’t, actually, care whether they were dumped down a badger sett or in the cathedral font,’ Peterson said. ‘The point is, it’s a highly unusual situation and I want to see it resolved quickly. As I told you before, the city needs publicity of this kind like a hole in the head.’

  ‘Funnily enough, that’s exactly what the corpse had.’

  Paling, Peterson stood and extended his hand, which Ford shook briefly. ‘I expect to be kept posted. Cheers, now!’

  ‘Prick,’ Ford muttered as the door closed behind Peterson’s suited frame.

  His PC bleeped to announce the arrival of an email. His heart rate picked up when he saw the sender: George.

  She’d found the bullet. Although she cautioned against taking her word as gospel, it appeared to be a .308 calibre ballistic tip, a typical deer-hunting round. After bouncing around in Tommy’s skull, it had travelled south and lodged in his liver. For time of death, the copper’s friend and pathologist’s major irritant, she’d estimated two to five days. Whoever cut him up had used a large-bladed knife and a hacksaw.

  Thanking whichever stars had aligned to bring George to Salisbury, he called one of his contacts, the news editor of the Salisbury Journal.

  ‘Hello, Inspector, what can I do for you?’

  ‘You might have heard there’s been a nasty murder. Tommy Bolter?’

  ‘I did hear something, yes. We put a little piece on the website ahead of the next issue.’

  ‘We need people to come forward if they saw him in the days or hours before his death. Even if they didn’t know him, they might recognise him,’ Ford said. ‘He had some distinctive tattoos. If I sent you some photos, could you print them and ask your readers to contact us?’