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

just thought it’d be easier if there were two of us. We can show them we’re taking it seriously.’

Ford doubted that was how JJ would see things. ‘Fair point. Although if JJ and Rye have been boozing since lunch they’ll be – what shall we say – volatile?’

Mick nodded. ‘Talkative, too. People tell you more when they’re pissed.’

Before leaving for the pub, Ford stopped by Olly’s desk. ‘Does Hibberd have a record?’

‘No, guv. Sorry.’

‘Not to worry. Thanks, Olly.’

Ford could hear the racket from The White Lion from halfway down Pennyfarthing Street. Mick reached for the highly polished brass door handle and looked at Ford.

‘Ready?’

Ford nodded, steeling himself for the inevitable confrontation with JJ. To their left, a couple of young blokes smoking looked them over.

‘You filth?’ one asked with a sneer.

Mick turned round, slowly. ‘What did you say?’

The speaker shrugged. ‘Nothing.’

Mick took a couple of steps closer until he was toe to toe with the guy. His mate sidled off, leaving him offering Mick a placatory smile.

‘No. I definitely heard you say something,’ Mick said in a dangerous, low tone.

‘It’s nothing. A joke, yeah? I didn’t mean nothing by it. Sorry.’

Mick leaned forward, squaring his shoulders and crowding the young guy against the wall. ‘Do you want to know who the real filth are? It’s the perverts who rape old ladies and kids. The lowlifes who mug people to buy drugs. And shitheads like you’ – he poked a finger into the guy’s chest – ‘who’ve got all the balls in the world until they need some help. And then who do you call? Your mate over there? Someone in your crew? No. You call us, don’t you. So watch your fucking lip or I might just give it a new shape.’

Mick’s violent reaction startled Ford. But he knew the source. Mick’s marriage was crumbling before his eyes, and he was facing a very different future to the one he’d imagined.

Ford touched him on the elbow. ‘Let’s go in.’

He led the way, hoping that the stress of the divorce wasn’t going to push Mick over the line. A line he constantly flirted with, like a kid balancing on a tall brick wall. Or had he jumped down already – on the wrong side? He’d complained about the cost of his ‘leech’ of a lawyer. Was he getting help paying her fees?

Ford didn’t have time to start investigating. And strictly speaking, if he did have genuine suspicions, he ought to report them to the Independent Office for Police Conduct.

He left it. No way was he involving that lot. Not yet, anyway.

Inside, fifty or sixty people, from small children to men and women in their eighties or beyond, thronged the low-ceilinged space. Ford recognised faces from the inquest hearing.

The guests chatted, laughed, wept, shouted. Johnny Cash sang about pain and loss from speakers screwed to the blackened beams at each end of the bar. The bar staff, four of them, moved around one another in a choreographed dance born of many shifts working together in a confined space.

The outfits on display tended towards the celebratory rather than the solemn. The men mostly wore suits, in a range of patterns and exotic colours that would have had Salisbury’s funeral directors sighing into their top hats. Ford saw a gold waistcoat talking to a bottle-green window-pane-checked suit, arms waving animatedly in the limited space between them.

Ford thought Tommy would have enjoyed the acres of exposed female flesh, as displayed by plunging necklines, swooping backs and slit skirts.

The smell of alcohol dominated. He imagined liquor-strength vapour being sweated out of pores to mingle with the combined aromas of dozens of different perfumes and aftershaves.

Mick nudged him and jerked his head towards a door to the left of the bar. ‘JJ and Rye are through there. I’m going to go and pay my respects.’

Ford leaned closer. ‘Be careful,’ he said into Mick’s ear. ‘I know you went to school with them, but they’re pissed and they’re grieving.’

Mick nodded, then threaded his way through the crowd. Ford wondered if Hibberd would be at the wake, then dismissed the idea. Whatever had drawn him to the inquest would surely be overridden by a sense of self-preservation.

As he turned to place his mineral water on the bar, someone tapped him on the shoulder. He found himself facing the young woman he’d seen on Joe Hibberd’s arm at the inquest. In contrast to the sober black number she’d worn then, today she was dressed to kill in a strappy coral dress. Her eyes were unfocused and she swayed on her high heels. Her hair had come unpinned, and blonde tresses looped down to brush her bare shoulders.

In her right hand, she held a pint glass three-quarters full of something pink and fizzy. Clamped between her fingers and the sweating side of the glass, a photo of the dead man bore on its white border the words ‘Tommy Bolter RIP: Heaven gained a new angel’.

‘Are you a copper?’ she asked, brushing at a stray lock of hair that had stuck across her kohl-rimmed left eye. ‘You look like a copper.’

‘I’m a detective,’ Ford replied.

‘So, like, that’s a yes?’

He nodded. ‘Were you a friend of Tommy’s?’

Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Poor little Tommy. He never did nobody no harm, did he? I mean, who’d want to shoot him?’

‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. How well did you know him?’

She sniffed. ‘Me and him went to school together, didn’t we? St Jude’s over Laverstock way.’

‘Tell me . . .’

‘Gwyneth. Like the actress. My mates call me Gwynnie, but I hate that.’

‘Tell me, Gwyneth, do you know of anybody who wanted to hurt Tommy?’

Her eyes widened. ‘You mean, like, enemies and that?’

Ford shrugged. ‘Not necessarily enemies. But somebody he got on the wrong side of. Something like that.’

She shook her head then took a gulp of her drink. She belched loudly. ‘Oh, God! Sorry. It’s this cider. Forest fruits. It’s really gassy.’

‘Tommy?’ he said gently.

‘Oh, yeah. Look, if I tell you something,