CHAPTER ONE
Pale rays of early morning September sunlight striped the soldier’s face.
She sat with her back to an overturned wooden cart. Bootleg DVDs spilled across the gritty tarmac.
On this particular Sunday, the temperature on the plain hovered at just above freezing.
A burned-out car shredded by an IED lay on its side to the soldier’s right. To her left, tacked to the front door of a whitewashed two-storey building, a crudely painted sign read ‘Baghdad Marriott’.
Bearing a full-colour advert for Al Jazeera, a scrap of newsprint drifted through the mist-shrouded village towards her.
The paper fluttered a few centimetres above the ground, then, caught by a sudden gust of wind, picked up speed. On it sailed for a few more yards before catching on the soldier’s left boot.
It rattled on her toecap then detached, snagged momentarily on the knife in her right hand, and blew across her face. For a few seconds, the wind held it fast, moulding it to her features, before snatching it away and sending it swirling up into the air.
A small, iridescent green fly flew up from the pool of blood in which she sat. It crawled across the gently curved surface of her right cornea before flitting to the wound in her throat. There, it began laying its eggs.
Sixteen miles to the south-east of her position, the bells of Salisbury Cathedral chimed six times.
***
Inspector Ford slurped down the last of his breakfast coffee and picked up his guitar. It had been a wedding present from Lou. A ’62 Fender Stratocaster in Fiesta Red. Holding it, he allowed himself to remember holding her.
Whenever he took it out to gigs, guys would come up to him in the interval or afterwards, as he and his bandmates were packing up. They’d make small talk, then hit him with the inevitable question. ‘It’s not for sale, is it?’ And he’d always smile, shake his head, and maybe grip the neck a little tighter.
As the amp’s valves warmed up and intensified the hum from the guitar’s pickups, he strummed a chord. He had no need to be quiet. Sam was away on a climbing trip, one Ford had agonised over for weeks before finally caving in and giving Sam his blessing.
It had been one of the most difficult decisions he’d ever had to make: whether to let Sam spread his wings, which, at sixteen, he was entitled to demand, or to protect him from the dangers of the mountains. Which, deep down, he knew were worse for the father than the son.
Sam had gone with a bunch of his classmates including his best friend, Josh Pitt. Josh’s parents, Miles and Eleanor, lived a few doors along Rainhill Road from Ford. They had helped him through his grief after Lou’s death.
‘He’ll be fine, mate,’ Miles had said after dropping the boys off at the coach station and coming round to Ford’s for a beer. ‘Mr Moyles is a climber himself and the instructors at the centre are absolutely top-notch. I checked out their CVs online.’
Ford had smiled at that. How like Miles to have researched the background not just of the chemistry teacher leading the trip but the guys at the climbing centre.
In a final effort to allay Ford’s fears, Sam had installed a new app on both their phones. He’d shown Ford how to share their locations.
‘You’ll be able to see where I am, Dad.’
Ford tried it the first full day of the trip but experienced such a rush of anxiety when he saw the little pulsing dot in the middle of the mountains, he vowed to leave it alone.
He began playing ‘Stormy Weather’, then stopped abruptly as the song’s minor chords made him well up. An old Delta Blues tune lifted his mood. He stayed in Mississippi for another hour, working out the kinks in his mind by cycling back and forth through others’ stories of love and loss.
At eight, he rested the Strat back on its stand, switched off the amp and went for a shower.
The day stretched ahead of him, gloriously free of any responsibility. They’d just closed a case and for once there weren’t any others piling up on his desk or anyone else’s.
His phone vibrated on the desk beside him. Heart pounding, he snatched up the phone. Saw the name Sam – the rest of the text blurred. Was he OK? In hospital after a fall? Homesick?
In the Jag, Ford could be with him in under three hours if he caned it. But would an E-Type be suitable for bringing a wounded boy home again? Better take the Discovery. He breathed out and berated himself. Read the message, then decide.
climbing is awesome
check this out
Relief surging through him as fast as the adrenaline just a moment earlier, Ford tapped the image attached to the text. Sam in an abseiling harness, a grin splitting his face.
He tapped out a quick reply, in two separate messages, making sure to follow his son’s strictures on the ‘correct’ way to text. ‘Punctuation is so formal. It’s like you’re an old person.’
You “rock”
Haha
His phone buzzed a second later.
u funnyman
Smiling, Ford shook his head, pleased to have Sam’s approval and congratulating himself for having learned that less was definitely more.
Instead of hurtling up the motorway to rescue Sam, he pressed the Jag into service to fetch the Sunday papers. The car had been a wedding present from Lou’s father, a wealthy collector. Getting to the Co-op in Downton involved passing two other places that sold newspapers, but included a glorious stretch of sweeping country roads.
Forty minutes later, he was home again with the smell of petrol clinging to his skin and the chatter and clash of the engine’s metallic parts ringing in his ears. With a fresh mug of coffee, he settled back in his favourite leather armchair and shook out the paper.
Ford had just reached the music reviews, which he always saved till last, when his phone rang. He reached over to grab it from the table. Maybe it was Sam with something too exciting to be boiled down to a text. He smiled at the thought.
‘Sir, it’s Control. Got a dead body for you. Out in Imber.’
Ford’s reaction clicked over from fatherly indulgence to professional alertness. ‘Who’s there now?’
‘The military police called it in, actually, sir.’
‘Right. Get DC Harper out there, please, and everyone in forensics who’s on shift today. Dr Fellowes lives near me. I’ll call her. If she’s at home, I’ll pick her up on my way.’
Ford jumped out of the chair, scattering the papers from his lap on to the floor. He called Hannah Fellowes, the deputy chief CSI.
***
Hannah sat by a window overlooking her garden. The rest of her day was to be divided equally between reading, a walk in the countryside following a route she’d entered into a new app on her phone, and preparing dinner.
A long-haired grey and white cat came into the sitting room and levitated into her lap, plucking at her trousers with its claws before completing three circles and settling down for a sleep.
Hannah scratched the cat behind its ears, eliciting a deep purr that reverberated through her thighs.
‘Hello, Uta Frith,’ she said. ‘Did you know you sleep for an average of nineteen and a half hours in every twenty-four? That’s seventy-nine point one seven per cent of your day. You could be a lot more productive if you stayed awake longer.’
The cat yawned widely, revealing the corrugated pink roof of its mouth.
Hannah picked up a folder from a side table by her left elbow and turned to the first page. With a frown, and despite having read the document seven times already, she began once more.
Her phone rang. She tutted and glanced at the screen. Seeing the caller ID, she sat straighter. For a moment she allowed herself to imagine Henry was calling to invite her out for a walk, or to have dinner with him. Then she frowned and bit her lip. Stupid Hannah!
She took a second to put a smile on her face before answering.
‘Henry,’ she said. Though of course this was unnecessary. He knew his own name.
‘Morning, Wix. We’ve got a suspicious death on the plain. Are you available?’
She looked down at the stapled sheets of A4 paper. ‘
I’m at home reading a very interesting article in the International Journal of Forensic Science. But it can wait,’ she said. ‘I’m not on call, but I would like to come. Are you going to collect me?’ ‘
Five minutes.’
Hannah ended the call but kept the phone to her mouth. ‘Hey, Siri,’ she said. ‘Set timer for four minutes and thirty-five seconds.’
She rushed upstairs, dislodging Uta Frith, who mewled once then stalked off to find a quieter spot. Applying make-up in the bathroom, Hannah stared at her reflection. She knew at least seven men had found her attractive since she turned eighteen. But Henry didn’t, and she just had to accept it.
***
Ford grabbed his murder bag from the wooden pew by the front door and was swinging the Discovery out of his drive moments later.
Hannah was waiting on the road outside her house. Behind her, the thatched cottage looked incongruously peaceful for the home of someone who was often elbow-deep in other people’s blood and body fluids. A few remaining roses, their peach and cream petals browning at the edges, drooped from their wired-in stems above the front door.
Like Ford, she had a holdall – tough black nylon where his was scuffed brown leather. It contained the tools of her trade, from a white Tyvek Noddy suit to fingerprint powders and brushes, alternative light sources and phials of chemical reagent.
She climbed in beside him and fastened her seatbelt. He watched her click it into place then release and refasten it, tugging experimentally on the belt for a couple of seconds before leaning back.
‘Good to go?’ he asked.
‘Sorry, yes. It’s not OCD, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘Well, anyway, it’s not. But my anxiety levels are a little elevated this morning.’
‘Any special reason?’
‘No, everything’s fine. Just fine.’
Hannah was an expert on a range of fields outside her professional specialisation at Bourne Hill. After graduating, she’d moved to the US to complete her PhD before working with the FBI at their headquarters at Quantico.
She’d written scholarly papers on methods for detecting lies in witness testimony, but ironically was a terrible liar herself. Her Asperger’s lay behind that, Ford had realised. Knowing the truth made it impossible for her to deny it to another person. He drove on. Clearly something wasn’t fine, but now wasn’t the time to push it.
He focused on what was to come. Actions he’d want to take, people he’d need to bring in. The last village he drove through was Tilshead, a smallish settlement strung out along the A360 that ended in a petrol station with a convenience store.
‘Have you eaten?’ Ford asked.
‘Yes, thank you. I had porridge with sliced banana and sultanas at nine fifteen.’
Ford nodded, gently amused at Hannah’s answer. ‘I’m going to stop anyway. I’ll get some snacks just in case we’re out here for a while. What do you want?’
‘Nothing, thank you, Henry.’
He pulled in and hurried into the shop. With a couple of Mars Bars stuffed in his jacket pocket, he climbed back up next to Hannah and pulled out from the forecourt.
‘Next stop, Wiltshire’s ghost village,’ he said.
‘I looked it up while I was waiting for you to collect me,’ Hannah said. ‘The Ministry of Defence evacuated it in 1943 so American troops could practise for the D-Day landings. They never let the inhabitants back in. It’s used for urban warfare training now.’ ‘
Most of the surrounding area’s military land, too,’ he said. ‘If you walk up the hill from my house you can see puffs of smoke when they’re firing rockets or the really big shells.’
‘It’s quite sad, though. They found the village blacksmith weeping on his anvil when it was time to leave. Apparently he died of a broken heart a month later.’ She paused. ‘Although medically, that’s not possible.’
Ford followed the road up a hill and on to a piece of high ground. The plain stretched away from them to the horizon on the left, the right and straight ahead.
Copses of deciduous trees cloaked in orange, red and yellow foliage punctuated the gently rolling grassland. Every five hundred yards or so Ford passed a cross-track marked by steel posts topped in yellow, with signs informing the public, ‘TANKS CROSSING’. Hannah pointed one out. ‘Do you think the tank drivers have to wait for a green soldier to light up?’
Ford smiled. Hannah’s sense of humour was off-centre, to put it kindly. But that wasn’t a bad one.
‘Funny,’ he said.
‘Was it funny? Really?’
‘Yes. Not bad at all.’ ‘
Excellent. I’ll make a note later.’
He turned off the A360 on to a smaller B road, then immediately right past a black barn, inside which pieces of agricultural machinery lurked. Red, blue and green, with drooping arms and jointed booms covered in shiny steel prongs or discs. They resembled deactivated robots waiting for a signal to roam forth across the landscape, scarifying, piercing, slicing and cutting through the soft earth.
He drove fast along the single-track road, heading west for a couple of miles. They passed a herd of brown and white cows. Ford caught the eye of a long-horned bull that watched them as they approached, then sped past.
At a triangular gravelled lay-by he swung left, past a tall pole from which a large square red flag flapped, and descended a short shallow hill into Imber.
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