Land Rites (Detective Ford), Andy Maslen [best way to read ebooks .txt] 📗

ALSO BY ANDY MASLEN

Detective Ford:

Shallow Ground

DI Stella Cole:

Hit and Run

Hit Back Harder

Hit and Done

Let the Bones Be Charred

Weep, Willow, Weep

A Beautiful Breed of Evil

Gabriel Wolfe Thrillers:

Trigger Point

Reversal of Fortune

Blind Impact

Condor

First Casualty

Fury

Rattlesnake

Minefield

No Further

Torpedo

Three Kingdoms

Ivory Nation

Crooked Shadow

Other Fiction:

Blood Loss – A Vampire Story

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2021 by Andy Maslen

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781542021005

ISBN-10: 1542021006

Cover design by Dominic Forbes

To my family – Jo, Rory and Jacob

CONTENTS

START READING

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

‘If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.’

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

CHAPTER ONE

Polly Evans gasped for breath, unwilling to believe what lay at her feet.

Sparks fizzled in her peripheral vision and tremors broke out all over her body.

Five minutes earlier, she’d been enjoying a walk through the countryside with her border terrier, Murphy. They’d stopped in a tussocky meadow at the edge of a shallow section of the meandering River Ebble.

Mid-drink, Murphy had raised his dripping muzzle, splashed through the water to the muddy bank opposite and raced towards a white-blossomed hawthorn hedge.

By the time Polly had reached the yelping little dog, he’d disappeared into a gaping hole in the reddish earth big enough to fall into.

Polly had got down on her knees. She could see Murphy’s bunched rear end as he struggled to retrieve something. He’d reversed out and dropped his trophy before her on the grass, tail wagging, pink tongue lolling.

Mustering all the self-control she’d acquired in her thirty-year career as an inner-city biology teacher, she took out her phone and called the police.

To calm herself as she stared at the object Murphy had retrieved, she began naming its parts. Ulnar artery, flexor muscle of wrist, fibrous sheath of finger . . .

CHAPTER TWO

As Eric Clapton played ‘Three O’Clock Blues’ on the Discovery’s stereo, Ford glanced at the satnav. The dog-walker’s location was less than a mile away. Control had called him twenty minutes earlier.

He slowed to pass a young woman pushing a bicycle up the steep hill. She smiled and waved. He smiled back and accelerated away from her.

He saw a lay-by on the other side of the road, just before a hump-backed bridge. A gate beside it stood open. Someone must have asked the farmer to unlock it. He eased the Discovery through the gate and into the field beyond. The grass rippled in four-foot-wide undulations, the troughs containing six inches of water.

In the distance, he could see a forensics tent. A white van marked ‘Wiltshire Forensics Service’ sat off to one side, its rear doors open. White-suited CSIs moved between tent, van and a spot a little further towards the centre of the field, also protected by a tent. Uniforms were present, too. They’d erected a blue and white tape cordon. The Discovery rolled and heaved its way across the field, splashing through the drainage ruts.

Ford’s stomach churned as he drove closer to the crime scene. Ever since he’d left his wife to drown on a sea-level rock shelf on their last climb together, he’d experienced nausea at every murder scene he’d investigated.

The rational part of him knew he’d done the right thing. But the emotional Ford, the Ford who lay awake at night, endlessly rerunning those last, precious few moments with Lou, saw things differently. It leaned across a judge’s bench. Pointed an accusing finger. Screamed YOU KILLED HER! Loaded guilt on to his chest until he sat bolt upright at 3 a.m., gasping for breath.

Pushing the memories, and the nausea, down, he parked next to the CSI van. He gave the uniformed loggist on the cordon his collar number and slid under the tape she held up for him. The uniforms had set up an inner cordon. The white plastic tent occupied its centre, sides sucking in and bellying out in the breeze as if breathing. It backed on to a hedge of white-flowered hawthorn, through which brambles and ivy twined.

Out of the wind’s rough caress, the temperature rose. Standing just inside the doorway, Ford loosened his tie. The CSIs had erected the tent over a hole that opened out at the foot of the hedge. It was enormous. Easily big enough for a man to fall into. Around the edge, earth had been piled up. He looked closer. Sitting atop the soil he saw a few fragments of eggshell and a tiny white bone.

‘It’s a badger sett, sir,’ a male CSI said. ‘The lady who found the hand said her dog pulled it out of here.’

Ford left the tent and went over to a couple of uniforms standing with a woman in late middle age holding a scruffy little terrier on a lead. They’d managed to procure a cup of coffee for her, which she drank in small sips, her eyes darting every which way from over its rim.

He introduced himself, then said, ‘I understand you found the hand.’

‘Murphy