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

Olly to look at the Land Registry database, but in the meantime he figured that in a small place like Salisbury, locals often had the answers he needed. Some additional background might be helpful, too.

Twenty minutes later, he wandered into a pub on a road running along one side of Ball’s farm. He asked the barmaid which of her regulars knew the local area best.

‘You’ll be wanting Old Dan. Eighty-nine and he’s been drinking in here every day since he were sixteen. He’s there, love, by the fruit machine.’

Ford looked over and saw the man in question, large of belly, wild of hair, sitting beside a flashing, dinging, bleeping fruit machine. Ford wondered how he could stand the noise. He made his way over and introduced himself.

Old Dan shook Ford’s proffered hand, simultaneously using his left to raise his pint glass to his lips and drain the remaining beer. He replaced it on the thickly varnished tabletop with a meaningful look.

‘Get you another?’ Ford asked.

Old Dan grinned, revealing a great deal of pink gum and three or four yellowing teeth. ‘Summer Lightning. And some cheese and onion crisps. Please,’ he added, the grin widening further.

Ford wondered how the man was going to manage crisps with such limited dentition. Smiling, he returned to the bar.

With beer for Old Dan and a lime and soda for himself, Ford raised his glass and they clinked rims. Old Dan stuffed a handful of crisps into his mouth, gummed them enthusiastically, then took a long pull on his drink.

‘Well, then,’ he said finally, leaning back in his chair and stroking the blue jumper that stretched over his belly. ‘What exactly is it you want to know?’

‘Who owns the land around here?’

Old Dan’s bushy white eyebrows crawled upwards. ‘That all? Thought it’d be something a bit more difficult. You’d be wanting that Lord Baverstock. He owns all the farmland hereabouts.’

Interesting. Ford made a note. In the space of a single answer, Old Dan had drawn a line from the criminal underclass through the ranks of middle-class farmers to the aristocracy.

‘What’s he like, then, this Lord Baverstock?’ he asked, dropping easily into Old Dan’s country way of speaking.

Before answering, Old Dan drank some more beer.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘That’s a good question, isn’t it? His dad was what you might call old-fashioned. Never ’ad much time for the likes of me. Or you, come to that. But the new lord, now, he’s more of a man of the people. Or wants to be, leastways.’

Ford smiled encouragingly. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Oh, you know, gives you a nice “good morning” if you see him out on his horse. Treats his staff well. My grand-niece works up at Alverchalke Manor. She’s a maid but they calls her a housekeeping assistant.’ Old Dan uttered the job description as if it were a foreign phrase.

‘What else?’ Ford prompted.

Old Dan drank some more beer. Ford wondered how much he’d had before they started speaking. But the man held it well, that was the point. He was lucid, once you penetrated his thick Wiltshire accent, and delivered his answers confidently.

‘Ex-army, like a lot of ’em. Brave man, too. Got the Queen’s Gallantry Medal. And I can tell you, they don’t give those out for collecting the tops off Cornflakes packets.’ Old Dan threw his head back and laughed at his own joke, revealing the toothless cavern of his mouth. He rubbed at his chin and, as his sleeve slipped, Ford saw the edge of an old indigo tattoo.

In that moment, Ford saw a different side to Old Dan. He followed his instinct. ‘Were you in uniform?’ he asked.

Old Dan put his drink down. ‘I were eighteen when I signed up. The Glosters – that’s the Royal Gloucestershire Regiment. I were in Korea, Aden, Kenya, Cyprus, Swaziland: all over.’

‘So does Lord Baverstock like old soldiers, then? Is that why he says hello to you?’

Old Dan rubbed his chin again. ‘I suppose he must do. His gamekeeper’s been in the forces, too, Lily says. She’s my grand-niece. The housekeeping assistant,’ he added, presumably in case Ford had forgotten.

Old Dan excused himself, levered himself out of his chair and headed, none too steadily, towards the toilets.

Ford reflected on what Old Dan had told him and how it fitted with what he already knew.

Someone had shot a local gangster with a high-powered rifle round and dismembered the body, acts requiring a cool head. Both the landowner on whose estate the body had been found and his gamekeeper had military experience.

The stats said the murderer was most likely known to the victim. Ford’s instinct was to look higher up the social ladder.

Feeling he’d got what he needed, Ford thanked Old Dan when he returned to the table, bought him a fresh pint and left the pub to make a call from his car. On the way out, he spotted a copy of Salisbury Life with Lord Baverstock’s photo of a goldfinch on its cover. He picked it up and tucked it under his arm.

A quick Google search revealed that Lord Baverstock, officially the Viscount Baverstock, lived with his family on the Alverchalke estate in the Chalke Valley. The valley comprised unspoilt pastoral land following the River Ebble for eleven miles, from Salisbury towards Shaftesbury in neighbouring Dorset.

Ford called Alverchalke Manor.

‘Alverchalke,’ a woman’s voice announced in the crisp upper-class tones Ford associated with period TV dramas.

‘This is Detective Inspector Ford, Wiltshire Police. May I speak to Lord Baverstock, please?’

‘I’m afraid he’s out with the dogs at the moment. I’m Lady Baverstock. May I help, Inspector?’

‘I’m sure you can. A man was murdered on land that I believe you and your husband own. I’d like to come out for a chat, if that’s OK.’

‘Oh, how dreadful! And of course you must come. Whatever we can do to help. When were you thinking?’

Ford checked his watch. ‘It’s two now. Could we say three thirty?’

‘Of course. I’ll call my husband. Make sure he’s back by the time you arrive.’

Something about aristocrats made Ford uncomfortable.