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

the barrel, Ford’s mind whirled. He’d seen it before. Where the hell was it?

He closed his eyes. Heard a cocky young guy with a thick Wiltshire accent giving him lip as he snapped a pair of cuffs over his wrists: When my brothers hear about this, you’re going to be in so much trouble, copper, you’ll wish you never even saw me.

Muscular arms flexing in their restraints. And the same tattoo.

Ford opened his eyes. There couldn’t be two like that in Salisbury.

He was looking down at the right arm of Tommy Bolter, youngest of three brothers who were the nearest the city had to an organised crime group. The distance was still great, but they had ambition, which was always a dangerous quality.

As well as Tommy, Ford had once arrested the older two: Jason John, aka JJ; and Ryan, aka Rye. That case had been dismissed after a key witness failed to attend court. Nobbled, was the shared opinion of the cops who’d worked so hard to get the brothers before a judge.

He had to get out in front of this one fast, because JJ and Rye wouldn’t sit quietly and play the role of what the media liked to call ‘grieving relatives who just want to be left in peace to mourn’.

Ford heard the tractor’s engine rise in tone and turned to see the scoop angling down to take another huge bite out of the earth. Running back, he waved his arm at Ball. Having caught the farmer’s attention, he signalled with a slicing motion across his throat for him to kill the chuntering engine. He climbed up to the cab.

‘We need the head intact,’ he said. ‘I’m worried you’ll damage it.’

Ball shrugged. ‘Either that or I’ll just end up pushing the damned thing further in. You’d be surprised how far back those setts go. I nearly lost one of my dogs down one a year or two back.’

The story gave Ford an idea. A deeply unpleasant idea. An idea it would be wrong to foist on anyone he outranked. He sighed and climbed down. He retrieved a torch from his murder bag and climbed into a Noddy suit, booties and gloves.

DC Julie ‘Jools’ Harper, his bagwoman, had just arrived.

‘What are you doing, guv?’ she asked him as he returned from the Discovery.

‘I think I know who the dead man is, but I need to be sure.’

‘Who is it?’

‘I’m ninety-nine per cent sure it’s Tommy Bolter.’

Jools bit her lip. ‘Jesus! Let’s hope the one per cent comes up trumps, then.’

‘We need the last piece of the puzzle. Unless we’re facing someone who collects human heads, I’m betting it’s still down there.’

Her face contorted as nose, mouth and eyes all scrunched up into varying twists of disgust.

‘You’re not—’

‘I’m afraid I am. No other option unless we want to risk Farmer Giles over there turning it into a meat bowling ball or smashing it altogether.’

‘What do you mean, no other option?’ she asked, hands on hips. ‘We could send a cadaver dog down. Or get ground-penetrating radar over it. Or even find a caver to take a look for us first.’

Ford nodded. ‘We could do any or all of those. And they’d be safer. But what if it rains, Jools? Have you seen the forecast? The sett could flood and the head could be washed to God knows where,’ he said, warming to his theme. ‘Or another animal could take it and drag it too deep to recover. I’ll put my risk assessment in the policy book, but I’m going. It’s wide enough to get into. I’ll be fine.’

‘I still think it’s too dangerous, guv. And you’d be breaking about a dozen health and safety rules. What if it caves in on you?’

‘I agree. It is dangerous. But if we go on the College of Policing website and look up protocols under “B”, I don’t think we’re going to find “Badger”.’ Ford made a concession. ‘How about this? Get a rope, say thirty feet, and tie it round my ankle. That’s as far as I’ll go. If it goes taut, you can give it a tug and I’ll come out. OK?’

‘I’m not happy, but yes, I suppose that could work. And Wix’ll be pleased.’

Jools went off to get some rope. She brought it back and accompanied him as far as the now-ravaged sett. The digger had turned the opening into a deeply grooved trench, at the bottom of which the black mouth, three feet across, waited to swallow Ford whole. Jools tied the rope around Ford’s right ankle.

‘Wait!’ she said sharply, as Ford kneeled at the sett’s gaping mouth. He looked over his shoulder at her. ‘What if there’s a badger down there? Don’t they have really sharp teeth? Or claws?’

The thought had occurred to him at the same moment. He derived no comfort from it. ‘Thanks for that. I’m hoping the torch will scare them off. Otherwise, if you hear me scream, pull me out!’

He went for a braver than I sound grin. Jools’s frown made him sure he hadn’t pulled it off. He was tempted to abandon his plan and join her in the reverence for the rulebook she’d brought with her from a stint in the military police. He looked over her shoulder and saw he’d attracted an audience. A dozen or so CSIs. Uniforms and detectives. The dog-walkers. Ball with a grandstand view from his tractor seat. That decided it. He was going.

Hannah proffered a large evidence bag. He folded it up and stuffed it into the hip pocket of his Noddy suit. He took a deep breath and slithered down the sett’s sloping sides.

With his head and shoulders in the shaft, he aimed the torch at the roof, hoping badgers had a natural equivalent of pit props. Tangled, hairy roots dangled from the earth like the long straggly whiskers of a tramp’s beard. Were they binding the soil? He hoped so.

He shuffled along on his elbows, concentrating on breathing evenly. He pulled himself forward another six