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

to spend all bloody afternoon tracking them down and finishing them off. Cruel to leave them to die in pain.’

He picked up a coil of rope at his feet and strode off, crashing through the bracken, and beckoned Ford over his shoulder without looking back.

Standing beside Stephen, Ford looked down into the dead deer’s sightless right eye. It wore the same film he’d seen so many times before, in the eyes of dead people. The shine gone, along with the life that had so recently animated it.

Stephen drew a knife from a leather sheath on his belt and squatted. As he bent to his task, Ford heard rapid hoofbeats. He looked round to see Lucy galloping up on Woodstock.

She arrived and slid from the saddle in a single flowing movement. Holding Woodstock by the reins, she led the horse to a tree some thirty feet away and tethered it. The horse flared its nostrils and whinnied.

Stephen looked over, then turned to Ford. ‘Horses don’t like the smell. Makes them twitchy. Can’t say I blame them,’ he grunted, heaving out a pile of stinking intestines. ‘Absolutely bloody rank.’

Lucy joined Ford and Stephen and nodded to Ford.

‘Hello again, Inspector.’ If she was surprised to see him, she gave no sign.

‘Calmed down, have you?’ Stephen asked her, grinning.

She kicked him – none too gently, Ford saw – in the thigh. ‘I came to tell you I forgive you.’

‘Thanks, Loops. The old man didn’t mean anything by it.’

‘Easy for you to say, when you’re the one he took hunting the other day.’

‘Whatevs.’

Turning back to the carcass, Stephen finished gutting the deer and roped the hind legs together, fashioning the free end of the rope into a short leash.

‘I parked the Subaru over there,’ he said to Lucy, pointing to a copse fifty yards away. ‘Bring Woody over and we’ll tie this on. Get him to do some proper work for a change.’

Lucy’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Woodstock is a thoroughbred, not some bloody dray horse.’

‘Come on, sis, don’t make me drag it all the way myself.’

She stuck her hands on her hips. ‘You shot it.’

‘I know. And now I’m asking for a bit of help. Go on. For your big bro. Be a sport. Pretty please?’

She grinned. To Ford their banter looked genuine enough – born of long association, like that of any other pair of siblings. Did the Bolters chaff each other like this, he wondered? Not anymore.

‘Oh, God, fine! Hold on while I get him. But bring it away from those,’ she said, jerking her chin towards the gut-pile. ‘There’s no way he’ll stand still long enough over here.’

‘Thanks, you’re a brick.’

Ford shook his head. These two young aristocrats seemed to have completely forgotten he was there. Which suited him. It gave him an opportunity to see how they behaved together. And around firearms.

Both seemed more than comfortable. And Stephen had used his hunting knife on the carcass with practised ease. Was it really such a big step up from a dead deer to a dead man? Ford found he could quite easily imagine Stephen shooting Tommy, butchering his corpse and then jollying Lucy along to help him ‘chuck the bloody stuff down this ’ere ’ole’.

He watched Stephen drag the deer away from the discarded viscera, which were already attracting flies. With Lucy holding Woodstock by the bridle, and keeping the horse’s head turned away, Stephen tied the other end of the rope around the saddle’s pommel.

Lucy mounted Woodstock and, at a slow, steady walk, the stallion dragged the deer to Stephen’s dented olive-green pickup. With the carcass in the load bay, he closed and latched the tailgate.

‘Thanks, Loops. See you back at the house,’ he said.

She nodded, wheeled Woodstock round and kicked the horse into a trot, then a canter. Ford watched her go, nodding to himself as she reached the wide grassy avenue and shot off at full tilt, clods of earth flying up from Woodstock’s hooves.

With Lucy gone, Stephen seemed to lose interest in hunting. He shouldered the rifle and stuck his hands on his hips. ‘Did you actually want something,’ he asked, ‘or do the police just enjoy watching other people having fun?’

Ford ignored the provocation. He hit Stephen with the simple, direct question that had unhorsed men a lot more arrogant than him. ‘Where were you between nine a.m. on Thursday April the twenty-ninth and the same time the following day?’

Stephen pulled his head back. ‘You’re not asking me for a bloody alibi, are you?’

‘Can you remember?’

Stephen stared up at the tree canopy. ‘God, I mean, I suppose so. Let me think. It’s not as if I keep a bloody journal like a teenage girl. Dear Diary, today I murdered a bloke and dumped his body.’ Grinning, he looked back at Ford. Who didn’t smile. Some of the cockiness left Stephen’s eyes. ‘Yes! I do remember. I spent Thursday with a couple of mates, and in the evening I had dinner with Coco.’

‘I’ll need names and contact numbers for your friends. Where did you have dinner?’

‘The Beckford Arms in Tisbury. They’ll have details of my reservation.’

‘Thanks. As soon as you can, please. How about between midday on Friday the thirtieth and midnight on May the first?’

‘OK, yah. Well, let me see, I had a bit of a hangover. I hit the brandy pretty hard when we got back from the Beckford. Got up late, about half eleven, had a spot of lunch, then I went up to town. I had a business meeting and stayed over.’

That was interesting. Somehow, Ford hadn’t pictured Stephen working. Or Lucy for that matter. He decided to switch tack for a little while, let Stephen relax before pushing him on his second alibi.

‘What kind of work do you do?’

‘I’m a valuer for Selman’s – the auctioneers?’

Ford smiled encouragingly. He’d heard the firm mentioned on the news once or twice when a big sale came up. And they’d recently handled the sale of a famous rock musician’s guitar collection. A Stratocaster not dissimilar to Ford’s