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

know what history existed between JJ and Hibberd, but the bad blood between the latter and Tommy was enough to ensure enmity where JJ was concerned. He didn’t want things to get out of hand, but he wanted to hear whatever JJ was going to say next.

JJ didn’t say anything next.

He cannoned into Hibberd, arms outstretched, meaty palms landing square on his chest. Hibberd rolled around the impact and pushed JJ, who stumbled and almost went down.

The young woman with Hibberd screamed as JJ whirled round and lashed out with a bunched fist. It was a wild swing and Hibberd was already moving out of range. His own fists came up. Ford watched, amazed, as Hibberd stepped in and delivered a crisp one-two: a left jab into the side of JJ’s jaw, then a right uppercut that snapped his head back and sent him staggering against the wall.

The crowd, so recently cleaved by JJ’s rush, had reformed into an untidy circle around them. One or two of the men were removing their jackets. A woman in her sixties – bleached hair, leathery orange skin and a great deal of gold jewellery – took the girl with Hibberd to one side. Ford saw the flesh of the younger woman’s bicep dent under the pressure of her captor’s grip.

‘Do ’im, JJ,’ a man called out. Ford saw Rye Bolter yelling, his eyes red from weeping but now narrowed into hate-filled slits.

Ford checked for traffic, though Endless Street was quiet at this time of day, and recrossed the road. He strode towards the circle penning in the two brawlers, ID held aloft, and bellowed a command.

‘Police! Step back!’

Heads turned, and he saw expressions of anger, frustration, suspicion and even regret. Nothing like a good street fight to clear the air and release a bit of pent-up emotion. Nevertheless.

He pushed through the onlookers, who didn’t part for him the way they had for JJ, until he reached the centre. Hibberd had JJ in a headlock and JJ was pummelling Hibberd in the region of his kidneys. Neither man appeared to be tiring, or suffering overmuch.

Ford ascribed both symptoms to an excess of adrenaline, coupled in JJ’s case with a healthy dose of alcohol. Alcohol and maybe something that came not in a glass but in a small plastic bag.

Pocketing his ID, he took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders and waded in. He grabbed Hibberd’s left arm and twisted it up so he had to release JJ. Free of the headlock, JJ spun round, ready to mount a counter-attack, only to come face to face with Ford.

‘Don’t,’ Ford said.

Panting, JJ and Hibberd both glared at him. He returned their stares. Fantastic! He’d arrived in the nick of time to save the day, and neither man wanted rescuing.

‘He started it,’ Hibberd said. ‘You saw. He went for me.’

‘He’s trying it on with Tommy’s girlfriend,’ JJ retorted. ‘My baby brother ain’t even cold, and this scum’s making a move.’

‘I don’t care who started it,’ Ford said, feeling more like a yard prefect at his son’s school than a detective. ‘And I don’t care who’s going out with whom. If you want to fight, get yourselves to a gym. Don’t do it in the street. And especially not on my patch.’

No sense getting into a prolonged discussion. If they didn’t heed his words, he’d leave it to the on-duty response and patrol shift to sort them out. He turned and left the Bolters and their associates to find what solace they could in the nearest pub.

So Hibberd and Tommy weren’t just professional rivals. They’d also been seeing the same young woman. Her relationships with the two men could have been sequential, but Ford felt that was unlikely given the circumstances of Tommy’s untimely death.

Tommy could have found out and confronted Hibberd. But then what? Had a situation most people would regard as commonplace led to murder?

He couldn’t see it. Or, not precisely. Fights got out of hand all the time. Any copper working in a town of any size, even one as quiet as Salisbury, would know that. As the saying went, one punch could kill.

But he couldn’t see a fight over a woman escalating into a sniper-style takedown followed by a full dismemberment. What he could see, however, were two separate grievances between Hibberd and Tommy. One in each direction. And that was interesting.

He heard footsteps.

‘Ford!’

Ford stopped. Turned. Saw JJ running towards him.

‘What is it?’

‘I hear you’ve been up at Alverchalke Manor asking questions.’

Ford kept his face neutral, hiding his shock. Someone had leaked already. ‘Who from?’

‘Never mind who from. I heard, that’s all. Was it one of them? One of them rich bastards up at Alverchalke?’

The answer came easily to Ford’s lips. ‘No. It wasn’t.’

He looked JJ square in the eye. Did JJ believe him? He’d bloody better. Because it might have been one of them. And if not them, their gamekeeper. Who had coincidentally rocked up for the inquest with Tommy’s squeeze on his arm.

He wasn’t about to feed JJ’s thirst for revenge, though. The last thing he needed was a Bolter posse advancing on Alverchalke Manor in the dead of night with pitchforks and flaming torches. Or, more likely, sawn-offs and pickaxe handles.

JJ turned away and stalked back to the crowd waiting for him. Ford returned to Bourne Hill, striving to think of a new angle he could follow that would yield results before Tommy’s wake.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Midway through the next morning, Ford’s PC pinged with an incoming email from George. She’d fast-tracked the PM on the second corpse. As usual, he read her covering email first.

The body was male, aged between sixty-five and seventy-five. As he’d expected, death wasn’t due to drowning. No water in the lungs. But the true cause sparked an instant connection to Tommy Bolter. George had found a .22 bullet in the cranium. Plus stippling and powder burns under his chin that indicated a point-blank shot. He’d been in the water for a week to