Shallow Ground (Detective Ford) by Andy Maslen (to read list txt) 📕

‘I asked if you wanted to get a closer look at the bodies. We’ve finished taking samples.’

He squatted down, one foot on each of two yellow tread plates placed square on to the bodies. He concentrated on the bruises around the woman’s throat, the way they extended around her neck. A textbook pattern.

Among the reddened swellings at her throat, two dark oval bruises stood out, one each side of her windpipe. My thumbs did those. More bruising at the sides of the neck, including well-defined round bruises in a cluster. My fingers. I throttled you from the front. I looked into your eyes. I watched you die.

He looked down at the boy. Her son. ‘Kai and Mummy’. He looked peaceful, curled up into a comma shape. Enclosed by the woman’s splayed legs. No visible wounds. Why did they have to hurt kids? Poor little lad hadn’t lived long enough to cause anyone any pain. Growing up without his dad would’ve been hard enough.

He let the killer speak again.

I’ve got nothing against kids. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’s the one I wanted.

‘So why did you pull her trousers down?’ he murmured.

He looked around the side of her hips and lifted the tail of her shirt up with the end of his pen. Her underwear was in place. Not sex, then.

The posing of the bodies felt wrong. Almost tender – if you ignored the hideous fact that some stranger had burst into this family’s life and snuffed out two of its members. Which prompted him to think. Where’s the dad? Jools was a good copper. She’d be on it already.

Ford peered at the side of the woman’s head. Her hair, mid-brown and worn loose, was matted with blood on the left side. Yeah, it’s matted. Because I smacked her one, didn’t I? That’s how I subdued her.

He moved to the wall with the blood-daubed numbers. He knew the photographer would have taken plenty of shots. Different angles to capture the light falling across the surface of the marks, the better to determine what the killer had used to make them. He pulled out his phone and took a picture himself, anyway.

You bastard. You heartless, soulless, evil bastard. You did this, and you enjoyed yourself, didn’t you? And this is your idea of a joke, isn’t it? To taunt me. Well, it’s working. Because I’m going to find you. And I’m going to send you away for a very long time.

Ford left the kitchen. He walked the length of the hall, the clicks from the photographer’s high-end digital camera whirring behind him, adding its buzz to that of the flies. He swatted one away from his face as it zigzagged along the narrow space. He found Jools flicking through a photo album in the sitting room, a little blue railway engine on its side by her right toe.

‘She was married,’ she said, pointing at the mantelpiece.

Silver-framed wedding photos clustered together in the centre. Ford’s gaze travelled right, to a large photo on the wall, mounted in a pale wood frame.

A man, a woman and a toddler were laughing and looking at the camera. They wore white, and the photographer had chosen lighting, or some sort of Photoshop effect, to blur their edges, as if they were fading into the white background.

The woman, he recognised from the kitchen. The toddler was blond and bore enough of a resemblance to the boy for him to be sure on that count, too.

‘Find the husband. That’s our number-one priority. If he’s at work, we need to get to him before some idiot leaks this or posts a video online,’ he said with a scowl. ‘I don’t want him finding out his family’s been murdered from Facebook.’ Assuming he doesn’t already know.

Jools shook her head. ‘Too late for that, guv. He’s dead.’

‘What? Where’s the body?’

‘Not here. I found the death certificate in her bedroom. In the dressing-table drawer with her underwear.’

A widow, then, and a single mum. Ford’s heart lurched. You were doing your best for Kai. But in the end it wasn’t enough. You couldn’t protect him, and you couldn’t save him.

‘Next of kin, then. Brothers, sisters, parents. Find them, inform them.’

‘Me, guv? I did the last death knock. Can’t one of the others do it?’ Ford stared her down. ‘OK, fine, I’ll do it. I’ll sort out a family liaison officer as well.’

Ford sat on the sofa, registering the sagging springs beneath his thighs as it took his weight. Old. Second-hand?

‘What do you think?’ he asked Jools.

She got to her feet and pulled an armchair round to face him. She clasped her hands between her knees. Fixed those brilliant green eyes on his. ‘If it’s a domestic, an angry boyfriend or whatever, I’ll buy everyone in the team a curry and unlimited beers.’

‘Too weird?’

‘Too weird.’

‘So, what then?’

‘It didn’t look frenzied, did it? He took his time. And I haven’t found any evidence of robbery as a motive. I spoke to Nat. There was a handbag on the kitchen table and her phone and purse were still inside,’ she said. ‘Not a lot of cash, mind, but a fiver and some change. She still had her wedding and engagement rings on, too. The bedroom’s untouched.’

‘No perv stuff?’

Jools shook her head.

Ford rubbed the stubble on his chin. ‘He left her knickers on, so sex is out as a motive,’ he said. ‘What do you make of the numbers on the wall?’

‘My Lord High Satanic Majesty Beelzebub made me do it!’ she growled in a passable imitation of a movie Satanist.

‘Or it’s a jealous ex and he’s trying to throw us off.’

‘Could be, but it’s a hell of a bit of set-dressing.’

‘Maybe we are dealing with a nutter,’ Ford said. ‘But when we catch him, I’m going to do my damnedest to see him locked up, not sent to a hospital where some shrink’ll try to understand him.’

‘Agreed.’

‘At this stage the number’s just another piece of information,’ Ford said. ‘Let’s clear the