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

As he cruised past the hospital’s main entrance with its fundraising thermometer graphic, the cathedral’s spire appeared on the horizon. Wherever you were in the city or the surrounding countryside, you’d either have a clear view of it or be within minutes of one.

When he and Lou had moved down ten years earlier, that soaring monument to man’s desire to connect with the eternal had taken their breath away; literally, on the day they took part in a sponsored climb to the top of the spire and looked out over half the county.

He’d wanted to bury her in the Cathedral Close, but apparently for that you needed a special dispensation from the bishop. Instead, she rested in a country churchyard where he could visit her undisturbed by tourists snapping selfies with their backs to the cathedral and its wonders. Probably for the best. Her graveside didn’t bring out his most rational side.

CHAPTER FIVE

Gripping two mugs of coffee, Ford walked into Sandy’s office. She looked up at him and puffed her cheeks out. Her normally sleek ash-blonde hair stuck out at angles as if she’d recently been pulling at it. Then he saw the spreadsheet on her screen and understood why. Faced with budget forecasting, Sandy liked to list increasingly painful physical procedures she’d rather undergo.

‘Henry,’ she said, accepting the proffered mug and taking a sip. ‘Please tell me you’re bringing me good news.’ Then she wrinkled her nose. ‘What’s that smell?’

‘My news. Not sure it’s good, though.’

Ford sat in the leather chair across the desk from his boss. Blew across the surface of his own coffee before taking a sip. ‘I’ve just watched a digger pull pieces of Tommy Bolter out of a badger sett. That’s the stink.’

She regarded him steadily. ‘You’re sure it’s Tommy?’

‘I need a positive ID, but I’m certain it’s him.’

‘Jesus! I knew Tommy when he was just nicking other kids’ lunch money in junior school,’ Sandy said with a grimace. ‘What a waste of a life.’

‘And before you hear it from anyone else, I had to go down the hole to get his head myself. Couldn’t reach my evidence bag, so—’

She frowned. ‘You’re not about to confess to contaminating evidence, are you?’

‘I had no choice. If you want the whole gory tale, I dragged it out by the jawbone.’

Sandy barked out a single laugh. He didn’t hear any mirth in it.

‘Sorry, Henry. It’s bad, I know that. It’s just you have no idea what a relief it is to be discussing actual crime instead of budgets and’ – she peered at her screen – ‘multimodal performance metrics, whatever the hell they are.’

‘I think it means, are we catching enough criminals?’

‘Well, go and catch this one, then. Give me a green tick to put in the bloody column.’

Back in his own office, he spread out the crime scene photos on his desk.

The way the body had been cut up was interesting. These were not the random hackings of a disordered mind. No trial-and-error cutting, looking for joints. No raking away at solid bone with a chainsaw. No practice cuts. No stab wounds. The dismemberment was – he hesitated to use the word ‘clinical’ – professional.

He decided on a quick briefing with the team to get them going. Because what he really needed to do urgently was get out to see JJ and Rye Bolter.

Ten minutes later, he stood to address his assembled officers in the big meeting room in Major Crimes. They’d started calling it the ‘sugar cube’ after the Powers That Be had sent in decorators to paint the whole room white. Presumably drawing on a different budget to the one that consumed so much of Sandy’s time.

‘This morning, a member of the public out walking her dog found a human hand down a badger sett. We recovered the rest of the body. It’s a white male—’

‘IC1,’ DC Olly Cable murmured, already scribbling in his leather-covered notebook.

‘Well done, Fast-Track,’ Mick Tanner said, to grins from a couple of the older CID detectives and most of the uniforms.

Olly scowled at Mick. Ford had observed growing friction between the two men: Olly, the young ambitious graduate, and Mick, the long-serving DS and one-time rival for the job that was now Ford’s.

‘As I said, white male, chopped into bits,’ Ford said. ‘This isn’t confirmed yet, but I think it’s Tommy Bolter.’

A ripple of murmurs swept through the room. Only Olly looked confused.

‘Sorry, who’s Tommy Bolter?’ he asked.

Ford frowned with irritation. OK, Olly was a recent transfer, but he ought to have got himself up to speed by now.

‘Tell him, someone,’ Ford said.

Mick turned in his chair to address Olly. ‘Tommy, JJ and Rye Bolter are a bunch of wannabe Goodfellas. Or were, in Tommy’s case. Grew up watching too many Martin Scorsese films on stolen DVD players. They think they’re the crime lords of our fair city,’ he said, looking around the room and earning a few nods. ‘Drugs, nicking high-end agricultural machinery, sheep rustling, a bit of this, that and the other. Mum and Dad Bolter built the family firm on a scrap metal business. All dodgy, of course.

‘Since they died of drugs and alcohol abuse, JJ has ruled the roost. He’s ruthless and he’s made enough cash to employ a decent lawyer if we ever feel his collar. Rye’s the muscle. Borderline psychopath. And, until he recently took up caving, Tommy was the office junior, learning the ropes and chasing crumbs from JJ’s table.’

‘Thanks, Mick,’ Ford said. ‘Now, it appears to be a homicide. But until Doc Eustace tells us otherwise, there’s a slim chance it could just be a natural-causes-slash-accidental-death with a particularly grisly aftermath.’

‘Really, guv?’ Olly asked. ‘You don’t dispose of a body like that if they just died of natural causes, do you?’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, for a start, there’s no need, is there? You just call the undertaker. Or the police. And second, it’s so brutal. Who chops up a body and stuffs it down a badger sett unless