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

one of the city’s less salubrious quarters, between the railway station and the Churchfields industrial estate.

Ford had entered The Gundog five minutes earlier. The early-evening drinkers paid him no attention as he bought a Coke and took it to a table in a corner where he could watch the door.

The pub smelled of spilled beer and, even though smoking had been banned inside for years, stale smoke. The moulded tin ceiling had once been painted cream. Now it bore a greasy-looking coat of brownish gunk that he imagined must be the exhaled nicotine of thousands upon thousands of cigarettes.

The door swung inwards, admitting a wedge of grey light into the gloom. JJ strode in, a trench coat flapping open to reveal Burberry’s tan, red, white and black check. He scanned the room, saw Ford, then carried on to the bar. He returned a few minutes later with a tumbler of whisky clinking with ice.

He folded himself into the chair facing Ford and took a pull on his drink.

‘What’s that? Rum and Coke?’ he asked, pointing at Ford’s glass.

‘Just Coke.’

JJ snorted derisively. ‘God, you’ve really got no style, have you? Chain-store suits and bloody Cokey-Coley. Want me to buy you a bag of crisps to go with it?’

‘What did you want to see me about, JJ?’

JJ leaned forward. He fixed Ford with a cold, hard stare. ‘I’ve just been up to the coroner’s office. Cagey old fart wouldn’t give me a straight answer before the inquest. But he suggested’ – JJ made mocking air quotes – ‘that he won’t release Tommy’s body to us, on account of you lot haven’t caught his murderer yet. Which means I can’t organise his funeral.’

Ford felt a wave of relief wash through him. JJ had summoned him to tell him he was backing off. ‘I understand, and I’m sorry. But it’s standard practice.’

JJ shook his head, then took another mouthful of whisky. ‘You’re missing the point. We’re having a wake first, and the funeral whenever we get him back. The wake’s in six days. You’ve got till then to arrest someone.’

Ford shook his head. ‘This is pointless. It’s not how murder investigations work. You can’t just impose arbitrary deadlines.’

JJ stared at Ford, then spoke quietly. ‘Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. You’re dealing with the Bolters now. If I say you’ve got six days, that’s how long you’ve got.’

‘And if we haven’t caught him by then?’

‘You’d better start looking behind you if you’re out at night. Maybe check under your car in the mornings. Who knows? Maybe I’ll have a word with your boss,’ he said with a slight lift of the corners of his mouth. ‘Tell Detective Superintendent Monroe her golden boy’s on the take. I bet that would put a spoke in your wheel, now, wouldn’t it?’

Ford stood, briefly taller than the man he’d started to think of as his nemesis. He looked down at him. ‘Do what you like. I’m a clean cop.’

He left the pub and reached the Discovery without looking back. Though his thumping heart told him the cost.

Ford locked the door and pulled away. Six days. It wasn’t impossible, he told himself. Nothing was impossible.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

At 6.45 a.m. the following day, Tom Adlam wiped up his egg yolk with the last corner of fried bread and checked the big clock on the wall. He peered out of the kitchen window.

‘Thank heavens that rain’s finished,’ he said to his wife. ‘I wanted to move the cows on to the new grazing yesterday. But I can get to it this morning.’

Tom took his quad bike, enjoying the smell of rain-soaked earth as he powered north-west from the farmhouse towards what the family called River Field. The Simmentals would be ready for a change of scene, he reckoned. Ushering the forty beasts from trampled mud studded with the last of the stubble turnips to a meadow thick with grass would be one of the easiest jobs in the month.

He gunned the engine, loving the surge of power from the Yamaha’s punchy little engine as he crested the final incline and looked down at River Field. Which reflected the cloud-streaked sky across half its area.

‘Oh, bugger!’ he said, with feeling.

Seeing him coming, and lowing in anticipation, the Simmentals ambled across to the gate between their field and the flooded meadow beyond, their curly-haired heads nodding. He shook his head. Daft things would have to wait, now, wouldn’t they? Something must’ve blocked the sluice. Washed downriver by the storm, most likely.

Flicking open the throttle and churning up muddy ruts in the field, he powered back home. There, he swapped the quad for a tractor, slung a grappling hook and a coil of rope on to the floor of the cab, and arrived back at River Field thirty minutes later.

With an audience of curious cows, he tied the rope on to the tow bar then carried the coil and grapple over to the pond, splashing through the floodwater. He peered down into the murk. Saw merely his own reflection looking back out at him and the outline of a thick mass of twigs and branches.

He swung the grapple a couple of times and slung it out into the pond. Then he dragged it back towards the sluice gate. He tugged on the rope, jerking the grapple up and down, hoping to hook whatever lay at the bottom of the blockage. Feeling it snag on something, he increased the tension and noted with satisfaction the way the rope gave, then resisted.

Looking over his shoulder, he eased the big John Deere forward, letting the rope tauten. The rope snapped tight, shaking a spray of water droplets into the air, where they caught the sunlight and refracted briefly into a rainbow.

Little by little, the pond gave up its treasure. Twenty yards from the sluice gate, Tom stopped as he saw the rope begin to stretch. He put the tractor into neutral, climbed down and walked back to