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

illuminated the landscape with summer intensity, causing the ripening wheat fields to shimmer like gold. In the distance, silvery threads spread out against the green where the River Nadder meandered through a water meadow.

Alec and Jools had been right to ask him how he was feeling. Because he felt shit. Not the background level of shittiness he carried around all the time. Not the sadness that caused him to seek solace in work and to keep Sam at a distance when he knew he should be pulling him close.

This was the special grade reserved for this one day in the year. The anniversary. He divided his life into two, sharp-edged pieces. Before he killed Lou. And afterwards.

He turned away from the landscape and called Cherry Andrews.

‘My name is Ford. I’m a detective inspector with Wiltshire Police. In Salisbury. Are you at work?’

‘I am, but you’ve got me worried now. What’s this about?’

‘What’s your work address, please?’

‘I’m on Churchfields, the industrial estate? Brady Engineering. Harpenden Road. Just ask for me at reception.’

On the way, Ford rang Jools. ‘You’re in luck. I’ve found the next of kin. A sister. I’m on my way now.’

‘Thanks, guv. I owe you one.’

‘Yes, you do. In a pint glass.’

‘Be gentle, guv.’

‘Aren’t I always?’ He knew what she meant. His heart used to sink when he had to deliver bad news. He’d sweat, feel embarrassed and anxious at the same time. But not any more. Not after his wife’s death.

‘Just . . .’ Jools hesitated. ‘Be kind, OK? It’s a massive shock. Try not to sound like you’re reciting a script.’

‘Noted.’

Moving stiffly, Cherry Andrews showed Ford into a meeting room off the main reception area. The walls were dotted with grease marks from peeled-off Blu Tack. A pedestal-mounted fan moved the warm, humid air around the room.

‘Please have a seat,’ she said, gesturing at one of the hard, plastic-backed chairs around the table. Her face was pale. ‘What’s happened? Why are you here?’

Her forehead was grooved with concern. Ford looked her straight in the eye. He may not have felt any nerves or dread, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed the moment when you planted a bomb in the centre of a family and detonated it. Whatever Jools said, he knew their pain better than anyone. He just couldn’t bring himself to admit how much. Or why.

‘There’s no easy way to tell you this, so I’ll be straight with you. I’m afraid your sister has been killed. Her son, too. We’re treating their deaths as suspicious. I’m sorry for your loss. Truly, I am.’

Then he waited. You had to. You had to wait to see how the family member whose emotions you’d just blown to pieces was going to react. Some went into shock, not moving, not talking, barely breathing. Others hit you, beating their fists against your chest until they collapsed, sobbing. Others got angry, the men especially, railing at you, yelling, swearing. Others denied it. Even after you cuddled them and told them how sorry you were, Sam, but it’s true. Mummy’s dead. She’s not coming back. It was an accident.

‘How?’ she asked, after ten seconds of silence.

‘We’re not sure. But I have to tell you, it looks as though they were murdered.’

‘Looks?’ she said, louder this time, her eyes glistening. ‘What do you mean, “looks”? Were they or weren’t they?’

He nodded. ‘Yes. They were.’

This wasn’t protocol. He was supposed to wait until the results of the post-mortem. But hell, it wasn’t as if Angie Halpern had accidentally killed her son, throttled herself and then bled herself to death.

The tears overflowed Cherry’s lower lids, spilling down her cheeks and splashing on to the tabletop. A sob broke free, a gluey croak that hung in the air between them. She pulled a tissue from a pocket and wiped her nose.

‘Did she . . . I mean, were they . . . ?’ she asked in a voice clotted with sudden grief.

He knew what she meant. What she wanted to know. Relieved that at least he could offer her this small crumb of comfort, he told her what she wanted to hear. ‘It looks as though they died quickly.’ They didn’t. I’m sure of it. ‘We need to wait for the pathologist to conduct her tests’ – not ‘perform an autopsy’; nobody wants to picture knives and saws at a moment like this – ‘and there were no signs of any sexual assault.’

The language was brutal. But so was violent death. He’d never found that relatives responded well to euphemisms. It was as if, in this moment of extreme emotion, only the truth would do. The plainer and more unvarnished, the better.

She looked at him with eyes streaked black as her mascara ran. ‘What do you need from me?’

‘I need to find out as much as I can about Angela. Who she—’

‘Call her Angie. Please. She hated being called Angela. Said it reminded her of Mum.’

‘Sorry. I need to build up a picture of Angie as a person. The people she knew. Who she worked with, socialised with. Who she confided in. Did she have any enemies? People who might have wished her harm?’

Cherry dragged the tissue across her eyes, reducing it to a soggy, frayed scrap. He offered a fresh one from a packet in his jacket pocket.

‘I need to think. Oh, God, what do I do about the funerals? There’s so much I don’t know.’

Like, how do you tell your relatives? How do you stop yourself weeping through her funeral? Beating your fists against your father-in-law’s black-suited chest and sobbing uncontrollably as he pats your heaving back? There’ll a grief counsellor. But you can’t tell her why you’re so fucked up. You’d go to prison. Sam would grow up an orphan. Work’s good, though. Work’s always there for you. You can forget about your grief if you keep working.

‘I’m going to assign a family liaison officer to you,’ he said quietly. ‘She’ll help you get through this, Cherry, I promise. But I need you to know that we won’t be