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

judged.’ Maybe not the easiest motto to live up to as a detective, but she tried.

But she found she’d already taken a dislike to Matty Kyte. And she hadn’t even met him. Sounds like a right teacher’s pet, she thought. I bet he tries to smarm his way into their wills. Then she admonished herself for this uncharitable thought. I’m sure he’s lovely. Someone has to be. The cynical side of her character managed to get the last word. And that goes for people who draw in spilt blood, does it?

She smiled at the receptionist, noting her name badge. ‘Where can I find him, Marjorie?’

‘Hold on, let me check our staffing roster.’ Marjorie’s purple-varnished fingernails clicked over her keyboard. She frowned at her monitor then looked up at Jools. ‘Bodenham Ward,’ she said. ‘Women’s cancer.’

Jools thanked her and followed the direction of her pointing finger to a signboard at the T-junction where the lobby narrowed into a corridor heading left and right, away to different parts of the hospital.

Outside the ward, she pressed the buzzer for admittance. When a nurse in sage-green scrubs peered through, Jools flattened her ID against the small square panel of wire-reinforced glass. Smiling, the honey-skinned woman let her in.

‘I’m looking for Matty Kyte,’ Jools said. ‘Reception told me he was working on this ward today.’

‘That’s right.’ She looked round. ‘He was here a minute ago.’ She called out to one of her colleagues, who was carrying a bedpan away from a curtained-off bed. ‘Annie, did you see where Matty went?’

The second nurse came over. She frowned. ‘I think he went down to get Mrs Rennie a sandwich from the shop.’

‘But she only just had one!’

‘Said she didn’t like it. Matty volunteered to get her something else. I told him they all take advantage, but he just smiled, like always.’

Jools felt her resentment of the saintly Matty building. ‘OK if I wait here for him to come back?’ she asked.

‘Be our guest,’ the first nurse said. ‘You can sit at the nurses’ station if you like.’

Jools plonked her bag under the small desk and sat on one of the blue-upholstered swivel chairs. A half-eaten box of Cadbury’s Dairy Box chocolates lay beside a small pile of women’s magazines. She flicked through a much-thumbed copy of Vogue while she waited. The ward was hot, and the beeps and hums from the various monitors and machines made her drowsy.

‘Excuse me, Officer? Marisol said you wanted to talk to me?’

Jools jerked her head round, realising she’d been half-asleep and lying on a sunlit beach waiting for someone to bring her a mojito. Standing to her right was a smiling man in the midnight-blue uniform of a hospital porter: baggy trousers and long-sleeved tunic.

She stood and extended her hand for him to shake, buying a little time for her brain to wake up. His skin was dry, and the pressure of his grip was firm, but not hard. Nothing like the bone-crushers favoured by a few of her male colleagues at the nick.

‘Matty?’ she asked.

‘That’s me! Given name Matthew, but only Mum and Dad call me that.’

She assessed his appearance. He was a white male, around six feet tall, and looked fit, though not muscle-bound. His hair was a middling brown – the kind that witnesses describe as ‘average’ – short, straight and parted on the left.

He also had dark brown eyes; rather beautiful dark brown eyes, she couldn’t help thinking, fringed with thick eyelashes that she, personally, would kill for.

‘I’m DC Julie Harper, Wiltshire Police,’ she said, holding up her ID. ‘Could we find somewhere quiet for a chat?’

His eyes slid sideways. ‘It’s not my break for ages.’

She pasted a smile on her face. How eager was Matty to help? Really? ‘I’m sure your boss would understand if they knew you were helping the police.’

‘It’s not him I’m worried about, it’s my patients.’

Your patients? She leaned closer and was gratified to see him mirror her body language. Win them round, Jools, before they even realise what you’re doing.

‘I’m investigating two murders. A nurse and her young son. You might have read about them,’ she added in a conspiratorial whisper.

This close, she could smell his aftershave, a pleasant, woody aroma she always associated with her father.

His hand flew to his mouth, fingers fluttering. The gesture looked stagy to her.

‘I did. It’s so awful. If it was one of my ladies, I’d have just died.’

His outward appearance was throwing her off. She realised she’d been expecting some poorly educated lump for whom portering was the highest up the ladder he was ever going to get. Yet here was a well-spoken, well-groomed, if slightly camp individual, with movie-star good looks and an apparent passion for going above and beyond to care for the patients on his wards.

‘So, is there somewhere we can go for a quiet chat, Matty?’ she asked him again.

He looked over at the row of windows facing the fields and hedgerows. ‘Sometimes I get a takeaway latte and sit on a wall just down there,’ he said. ‘I like listening to birdsong.’

Thinking he was just too good to be true, Jools consented, nonetheless. ‘Let’s go there, then,’ she said. ‘See if anyone’s singing today.’

There! A flicker of a different kind of expression crossed his face. Blink and you’d miss it. Jools did neither.

DAY SEVEN, 8.55 A.M.

They sat on a low red-brick wall on the edge of a sunlit courtyard. Jools opened her mouth to speak, but Matty held a finger up to his lips.

‘Sshh!’ he whispered. He leaned towards her. ‘Close your eyes and just listen.’

This close, she fancied she could feel his body heat, despite the warmth of the sun. The aftershave, which a few minutes ago had aroused only pleasant memories, now smelled overpoweringly male. A flake of dried blood nestled in the crease of his chin.

‘You first,’ she said.

‘OK,’ he said.

And he did, just like that. Closed those long-lashed eyelids, let his mouth curve upwards into a smile, inhaled and sighed out